Kumuls need to lift their game

 THE only international sporting event that most Papua New Guineans are interested in this year is the Rugby League World Cup from October 26 to November 30. 

PNG prides itself on being the only country in the world that calls rugby league its national sport. 

It is one of the best funded codes, even if only recently, with two consecutive governments allocating money to develop it. 

An initial injection of K20 million during the Somare term in 2009, coupled with further corporate support ensured the sport was poised to reap the benefits that a wide talent pool and astute coaching could offer.  The only problem is, the national team, the Kumuls, do not seem to be able to give fans the results and performances they want. 

Sunday’s Prime Ministers’ XIII match in Kokopo illustrated that fact. The 50-10 loss to the Australian PM’s XIII should remind everyone that Team Kumuls is a work in progress. 

Still we expect a team that has undergone five special training camps this year under coach Adrian Lam and Mal Meninga to keep the margin respectable. 

It is fair to expect some kind of tangible result from all the effort put in this year. 

A 40-point gap says we are not where we should be at this stage of the year if the aim is to go deep into the World Cup stages. 

On Sunday’s form we will struggle to beat Group B rivals, France, who is probably our best bet at this point of registering a win. Samoa, with their stack of National Rugby League talent, may be too much of an ask and New Zealand are on another plane. That means we may be consigned to finishing fourth (last) in that pool, and an early exit from the tournament.

That will truly be distressing for fans and those who have gone out of their way to be associated with the Kumuls brand. 

Can we make the quarter-finals? We should be able to because the tournament is structured in such a way as to see three quarters of the two top pools – A and B – progress to the next stage. 

If PNG cannot do that then we can rightfully say the campaign was a failure. 

The quarter-finals loom as our final. 

In fact our World Cup effectively started on Sunday when PNG played what was a strong Australian side minus Johnathan Thurston, Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Paul Gallen, four players who are no longer part of the NRL finals series but did not make the trip to PNG because they are already certainties. Our best case scenario is finishing second in Group B. 

We will need to beat Samoa and France for that to be the case. 

That would then see PNG play most likely Fiji in the quarters. If PNG finishes third they will probably play England. England beat PNG 36-22 in the last World Cup in 2008 and repeated the dose, 36-10, in the 2010 Four Nations series. 

If the Kumuls manage to get the right opponent at the quarter-final stage and win they will then face Australia in the semi-finals. 

After the Kalabond performance it is hard to see the Kumuls doing the unthinkable. The Kumuls will not beat Australia but just getting to that stage would be a massive achievement. 

It would go a long way to justifying the expenditure of public money that has been put into the Team Kumuls concept. 

At the end of the day doing well in England should only be the short term goal for the Kumuls. They need to maintain their standard and build on their accomplishments. 

The game needs to be strengthened before we can realise aspirations like having a team in the NRL. 

Rugby league is not the only sport in PNG but it is the national sport and it is time the Kumuls started  delivering the results.

For the fans, nothing else matters.