Commitment to restore pride

Happy New Year to everyone and welcome to the first edition of Churchie’s Comments this year in your favourite rugby league newspaper — The National.
I hope you had an enjoyable and safe festive season. It was great to spend some time at home but unfortunately, my break was interrupted by natural disasters.
Australia is struggling with the worst bushfires on record and they’re truly out of control. While my family were fine, I have friends in some of the affected areas so I hope they remain safe until the fires subside.
My wife and I also had a trip to Fiji planned which unfortunately was cancelled due to the cyclone that made its way around the islands of our Melanesian cousins.
We resumed training this week. Three of the four Test players in Stanton Albert, Enock Maki and Terry Wapi joined camp for the first time. Unfortunately, Stanford Talita had to withdraw from the squad due to personal issues, which is a shame as I was looking forward to him taking the next step in his development.
Rhadley Brawa is still at home with his daughter who is ill. Rhadley has our blessings to re-join us as soon as his daughter gets better. We wish her a speedy recovery.
Training this week was about going over what we covered prior to the break. This will help stamp that back into the players’ memories while also allowing us to introduce new ideas to the Test players for the first time. Stanton and Enock bring with them a lot of experience and it has been good to see them taking less experienced players aside during training and pointing them in the right direction.
We have a lot of work to do in the next month. We have an advantage. We train nine sessions a week compared with four or five sessions by the other teams. After this month, we will shift our focus towards our two trials in February.
Our training will become more dynamic as we prepare for these games, and as the anticipation rises towards playing, our players will naturally become more competitive.
They are all aware that positions are on the line for our round-one team, which will fuel desire in the group.
I feel that we won’t get to see the full benefit of the changes in coaching style and skill development until the end of the season but I’m confident that the we will work hard to get better each week this year.
I know the players want to make a commitment to restoring pride in what the Hunters mean to them. And more importantly, to what it represents to our valued sponsors and partners and all the loyal families, friends and fans in Papua New Guinea and abroad.
We’re hoping that 2020 is a great year and that the Hunters help in the process of making this year a good one for you all.
I’ll be back in two weeks for some more thoughts and comments so until then, I ask that we respect and be kind to each other.

Cheers,
Matt