City to start RLWC prep

By ISAAC LIRI
RUGBY League World Cup host city Port Moresby will start its preparations for the event after the elections.
The National Capital District will host three matches – all involving home side the PNG Kumuls – in the this year’s World Cup with Australia and New Zealand the co-hosts.
World Cup host city manager Tasman Samuel said preparation plans would be quite similar to the 2015 Pacific Games and the Fifa Under-20 Women’s World Cup.
“Preparations will start after the national elections on Aug 1,” Samuel said.
We have a marketing plan for the event to ensure we sell the three pool matches and involve fans.
We also have city dressing plans and all will take effect post elections.”
“We don’t want to start anything while the elections are running because as we all know the elections are too big and the world cup preparations might get swallowed up in the elections which from a marketing stand point would be a waste.
“So after the return of writs in July 24 we will start from Jackson Airport putting up billboards and in partnership with the NCDC we’ll do city dressing.
“The preparations for the 2017 RLWC will be similar to the 2015 Pacific Games and the Fifa Under-20 Women’s World Cup but we want to make it a bit different in terms of marketing items which we’ll bring in.
“We are going to organise a fan zone at Vision City and we’re in the process of planning that out so we’re going to have some fan activation games that have never been seen before in this country basically to lift the level of the marketing,” Samuel said.
He said their Host City team was made up of four members including himself and by the end of June they would have a full team in place to start prep work leading up to the World Cup.
The Kumuls are scheduled to play Wales (Oct 28), Ireland (Nov 5) and the USA (Nov 12) at the National Football Stadium in pool matches.