Health, safety remain paramount for us all

HELLO everyone, welcome to the ninth edition of Churchie’s Comment for the year in your favourite rugby league newspaper — The National.
What a start to our football season! However it seems football has taken a back seat to the worldwide situation of the coronavirus. I will say that so it should.
The SP Hunters were faced with a difficult decision after our round one last Sunday against South Logan in Brisbane. I received a call a couple of hours before kick-off from the Queensland Rugby League (QRL) asking that for our continued participation in the Intrust Super Cup, we would be required to remain in Australia. With us boarding the bus to the game when the call came through, I decided that this would be a huge distraction to our preparation and chose to discuss it with the players and staff afterwards.
On our return to the hotel, we met to discuss the options around this decision. I made the players and staff aware that it was an individual choice and that any decision made would be respected by myself, teammates and the club. The younger players were outstanding, they said they didn’t want to make a decision until after the senior players with families back home and players with university commitments had a chance to decide.
Immediately, I was impressed. I made it clear that we were only asking them to remain for seven days and then decide further as the situation unfolded. The players made a choice to stay and put the competition’s needs ahead of themselves and their families. I was filled with great pride that this group of young men made this decision. That took great courage.
The plan was to send us straight to the Sunshine Coast on the Monday to a high performance centre to prepare for round two. But this changed on Monday when the QRL came to meet with the playing group. They instead sent us to another hotel in Brisbane close to the airport for a planned return for Wednesday.
Our return to PNG comes with a mandatory 14-day isolation. This is to limit any exposure to the PNG public. Not one of the playing group is showing any symptoms but as a precaution, its best to isolate them than sending them straight to their families and risk infecting any of our loved ones.
The QRL has made the decision to suspend the competition until June. For us, that means we would kick off again in round 12. This date was determined to be the fairest for the competition as it will allow for each team to play each other once. This would leave us with 12 remaining games, with six at home. The country round is in PNG so that makes five away games. The QRL will issue directives and ask that a stand-down period for training be informed for all clubs. It is too early to say what our plan looks like in the near future regarding training programmes.
Unfortunately, the game against Souths Logan wasn’t telecast in PNG. I’m confident in saying that, it will be a memory that will live with me forever. It was a great occasion for three of our players — Stanley Olo, Mark Piti and Emmanuel Waine — making their debuts. It was also a game to remember to come back and win after being down 30-6 not long after half-time. It’s not often in the ISC that a team can win a game from 24 points behind. It was an outstanding performance.
We did well to get into the contest, however, we relied on a fair amount of individual brilliance to get us over the line. Terry Wapi scored two brilliant individual tries and a third through some great build-up from Olo. We will need to play better as a team and learn to be able to apply pressure on the opposition. Our completion rate for the game was 75 per cent for the match so we definitely saw improvement there but will need to kick better to really put teams under pressure.
Due to the coronavirus issues, I have had no time to reflect on the game personally. The welfare of the players and staff have been at the front and centre of attention during this time. I hope that you all remain safe and well during this time and that when the competition resumes, we can press forward and build on our round-one performance.
Until next week when I come your way for more updates, let’s respect and be kind to each other.

Cheers,
Matt