Focus on juniors, skills: Bai

By MARTIN LIRI
FORMER Kumul Marcus Bai, pictured, has renewed calls for a more concerted effort to be placed on developing rugby league players at a much younger age if Papua New Guinea is to continue to reap positive results at international level.
Bai, PNG’s most successful home-grown player, who broke into the competitive Australian National Rugby League, spending a successful stint with Melbourne Storm, was making reference to the game that catapulted him to iconic status about working the system backwards in order to incorporate programmes for children as young as 10 years old.
A similar approach needs to be adopted by other sports as well, if they have not yet, if our nation of naturally gifted sportsmen and women, wants to reach higher standards in success on the international level.
Bai, who is one of the former Kumuls involved with the preparations of the 2017 Kumuls World Cup campaign, was speaking during an interview on FM100’s SP Sports Show last Saturday.
Bai commended the PNG Rugby Football League and its various partners that have delivered some successful programmes such as the SP PNG Hunters, who won this year’s Queensland Intrust Super Cup premiership after just four years in the competition. And riding on the crest of such success, PNG needed to zoom in on areas of rugby league that will make the country more successful in the game, producing an influx of high quality players who can break into the NRL or Super League systems — valuable experiences that can boost the Kumuls.
“We need to go backwards to start teaching our players how to play the game with the skills and even incorporate structures at an early age,” he said.
“We have players who know how to pass,” but they need to be taught what kind of pass or what part of the field these specific types of passes should be thrown,” Bai said.
And these things are better taught very early in a player’s career using programmes that are modified for children as early as 10 years old — concepts used by tier-one countries like Australia, England and New Zealand.
Former Kumuls like himself, John Wilshere and Stanley Tepend and the tireless Hunters trainer Solomon Kuluniasi, have tried their best to work around this disparity as they assist head coach Michael Marum prepare the Kumuls as best as possible heading into their opening World Cup match against Wales on Saturday.
Bai praised former Kumul team-mate Marum for what he has achieved so far and urged the hierarchy of the game to spread their attention to areas that have been highlighted and increase the depth of players whose capacities meet the standards alluded to.
The NRL players in the squad, captain David Mead (Brisbane Broncos), Kurt Baptiste (Canberra Raiders), Nene MacDonald (St George Illawarra), James Segeyaro (Cronulla Sharks) and others who have been exposed to higher level competitions are also sharing their knowledge on the game with those who are new to this level of football.
Bai said, as a former Kumul, he like the other former players had always wanted to help the national team on various international campaigns and when asked by Marum to be involved were now relishing the opportunity to share their experiences with the squad which has settled into a cohesive unit and is looking forward the World Cup campaign.