Barbs take out Madang Sevens trophy

THE Madang Christmas off season youth-engagement rugby sevens competition ended on a high note during Boxing Day on Saturday.
The competition  with the theme “togetherness and making a difference for our youth” ran for four days.
It was aimed at keeping youths within Madang town busy during the festive season after most of the sports in the province went to recess.
The Finroad Barbarians finished as the champion in the Madang Sevens offseason competition after defeating Kalibobo Gunners.
The Barbarians who were the undefeated team since the competition started four weeks ago thrashed the Gunners 19-10 during the grand final on Saturday.
The Barbarians were the first to score through Yakson Yakumani three minutes into the game to take an early 7-0 lead.
Straight from restart Kalibobo Gunners Fattyman Bali outran his opponents and scored an unconverted try to narrow the gap to 7-5.
A minute before half time, Gunners’ Jeffery Bai  intercepted a poor pass from the Barbarians to run 50m before offloading to one of his teammates to score under the posts to overtake Barbarians 10-7.
Yakumani visited the Gunners try line few minutes into the second half with his second try to surge past the Gunners 14-10.
Barbarians came up with two more tries to finally win the off-season rugby sevens trophy.
Danny Polong was named the man-of-the-match with his outstanding performance on the field. He received K50 as cash prize.
In the playoff for third spot, Redscar Ants defeated the Panim Doggies 28-5 in a one-sided affair.
Organiser and president of the sevens competition Paul Joseph said he was pleased to see youths enjoying themselves over the Christmas period.
He said the aim of the event was to keep the youths away from the streets.
He was impressed that the competition had achieved its objective by seeing the number of youths involved.
Meanwhile, Madang will be sending two teams to compete in the Trans-Highway Sevens competition in Lae early next year.
He said his boys had prepared well and would  train for few weeks before leaving for Lae.