Kiunga, New Guinea Islands legs on weekend: Lepa

COCA-Cola Ipatas Cup chief executive officer Timothy Lepa announced that the Kiunga challenge in Western and New Guinea Islands challenge would start on Saturday.
Lepa said since last weekend of December, most of the legs were completed and 12 gold passes were awarded to the winners for the Ipatas Cup regional legs.
“Gold passes for Western and NGI region teams are among challenges that have not been completed,” Lepa said.
“The Western challenge, called the Kiunga leg, will include teams from North and South Fly, Kiunga and Tabubil and they will compete for one gold pass starting tomorrow while for the NGI challenge, Kimbe will host the tournament that will compose of teams from East New Britain, the Autonomous Region of Bougainville New Ireland and West New Britain the host province this weekend as well.”
“The Jiwaka challenge was the first tournament of the annual offseason tournament and there were two gold passes for that leg,” he said.
“The first team to win gold passes were the Banz Bulls and Minj Bulldogs,” Lepa said.
“After the Jiwaka challenge, the other tournaments in the National Capital District and Central, Enga, Simbu, East Sepik and Morobe challenge ended last weekend.
Lepa said he had purposely split the Morobe province into two challenges, one called the Morobe leg for teams outside of Lae like Wau, Bulolo, Markham, Ramu, Kainantu, and Henganofi in the Eastern Highlands. The second leg was for the Lae-based teams.
Lepa said the winners of the each leg would meet in the Goroka in the Eastern and Western End playoffs next week and the winners would advance to Lae at the end of the month for the final.
“The reason why we are fast tracking the Ipatas Cup is to give them enough time for the Enga Mioks management to pick a train-on squad to prepare for the 2019 Digicel Cup,” Lepa said.