Hunters squad on break

The National Sports

By SULI SULI
THE Papua New Guinea SP Hunters have broken camp for Christmas with the 50-member squad sent home for a deserved two-week break following a five-week block in Port Moresby.
With the first phase of preseason training gone, coach Paul Aiton and his staff will have settled on their squad for the 2024 Hostplus Cup season which will reassemble in early January.
“We’ve progressed things little bit, split them up in groups and the boys are doing really well. All those core-basics we went over and over in the first three weeks are really coming together now,” he said.
“I’m happy with where we are at the moment with the boys. It’s a big squad of 50.
“I’ve been told we’re going to have a squad of 30 for the season. We’ve got 20 signed prior. So we’ll add 10 more players to the current squad of 20.
“It’s going to be tough for the ones that have come in, which is a good thing.
“I’ve already had a chat with few of the boys and I’m going to continue to do one-on-one meetings with each one of the players to discuss whether they made the next stage of block two or not.
It is understood that the players retained from last season have already secured the first 20 spots and the remaining 10 spaces will be determined in the second preseason run.
The Hunters have stuck to refining the football basics of defence and attack mostly at training and things have scaled up towards the end.
The camp was used to address some of the key aspects of the game including goal kicking which has been a consistent problem over the last few seasons. The players have gone through numerous tests and training drills to meet the fitness benchmarks for the next chain and while it has been a great learning curve for the Digicel ExxonMobil Cup and Junior Kumuls players involved in preseason, coach Aiton will announce his final team for the 2024 Hostplus Cup season at end of the next block.
Aiton outlined his short term goal to see the Port Moresby-based team win more games this year and hopefully earn a finals spot towards the end of the season.