Ipatas Cup will offer K200,000 in prize money

 By GABRIEL LAHOC

APART from growing bigger, the Ipatas Cup is now richer.

The biggest off-season rugby league competition in the country will have only 86 teams, unlike last year’s 168 teams selected from the four regions.

The competition will have a K200,000 purse that has been doubled from last year’s K100,000 prize money.

Competition chief executive officer and Enga Mioks coach Timothy Lepa announced  that in Lae last Friday when accepting the registration and affiliation of the 3-Mile Brothers as the first team from Lae and the Northern region.

Lepa said because the competition was used as the selection ground for the Mioks team to play in the Digicel Cup semi-professional competition, it would start in December and end earlier than in the past to compliment the Mioks’ preparation. 

“Mioks struggle every start of the Digicel Cup season and we will now end the competition in March to give time to the Mioks selected players to prepare in advance,” he said.

“This year’s prize money has jumped up from K100,000, which was split up among the first four teams. This year’s prize money has gone up to K200,000. 

“This is much bigger than the Digicel Cup competition, which has only K25,000 and itm is  the biggest in any competition prize money in the South Pacific.” 

Lepa said Alotau, Popondetta and Bougainville would be included into the competition as part of its expansion, while from the Northern region there are only eight spots for teams that will l go through a pre-trail selection process to qualify.

“In the pre-trail matches we will assess teams and see how strong they are, we don’t want a good town team beating a rural team by a cricket score.

“Because of the big prize money the teams that will take part must be prepared as there is great interest but we will cut down on the number of teams,” he said.

“Teams can recruit who they want to play, there is no restriction, they can recruit five Kumuls in their teams it does not matter because it’s a money game,” Lepa said.

The 3-Mile Brothers, who finished third in the annual Lae off-season competition, have mainly  unemployed young men from the Miles area.