Kudos Team PNG

I WISH to pass on my congratulations to our athletes and officials who have participated in the recent Pacific Games in Samoa – particularly to those who have won medals, or who have raised the level of their performance to a new height.
And a very special one goes to athletes and officials of PNG who have either topped the medal tally in their respective codes or finished near the top – like athletics, powerlifting, weightlifting, rugby touch, and tennis and rugby nines, among others.
Those codes have done well and should be supported well in the next Pacific Games and Mini Pacific Games.
Their athletes, officials and federations are doing a super job.
While the memories of the Samoan Games are still fresh with us, I urge the PNG Olympic Committee and the respective federations take stock of their sporting codes which PNG athletes participated in but did not win any medal at all, or won no gold.
Such codes include volleyball, va’a, basketball, sailing, shooting and archery.
I was a bit unhappy with the performance of those codes.
Was the selection and preparation of those codes done fairly, or were they rushed to just field a team in the last minute?
Did those federations in charge organise national championships to select the best players from the national pool instead, or they just picked athletes based in Port Moresby and Lae?
These questions must be answered and PNG must prepare better for the 2023 Games.
I am a bit concerned as a citizen and taxpayer why some sports do not promote their codes in other smaller centres, do not encourage participation from those centres and yet continue to use the same athletes from Port Moresby, Lae or even overseas to represent PNG.
It is time the PNG Olympic Committee and the respective federations ask those serious questions.
We cannot continue to get the same bad results in those codes.
Other questions they should be asking is: Are the coaches and trainers selected for the different codes the best?
Or, was their unfairness practised?
If the selection of athletes was not fair, we will continue to have the same mediocre results in those named sporting codes time and again.
We cannot continue to do that.
We must stop being unfair and biased in our selection and work towards getting a fair representation of players from around the nation to be part of our national representative sides.
If we do an honest job in our promotion and selection, some of those named codes could be bagging medals in the next Pacific Games.
Let us change the way we are doing things to get better results.