New guidelines for membership

Greetings to all our rugby league family and welcome to our 22nd edition of Fulltime Reserve, a weekly column to discuss all matters rugby league in our favourite newspaper The National.
The Papua New Guinea Rugby Football League (PNGRFL) early this year announced the new governance reform that would be undertaken across the game in line with the amendments to the governing body’s constitution passed at the annual general meeting in June.
PNGRFL has now finalised these governance structures and the board at its meeting this week will endorse the proposed three constitutions for the four confederates, provincial boards and affiliate member associations across the country.
These constitutions set out the governance framework by prescribing the structure and guidelines and the powers and responsibilities for these entities and our members to ensure that they are aligned with PNGRFL for the overall administration of the sport.
The confederates, provincial and affiliate member associations will be required to adopt these constitutions and restructure their governance and management to comply with the guidelines of the respective constitutions.
These new constitutions set out a decentralised governance and management framework for the sport at the different levels.
The constitutions clearly outline the entities’ objectives, powers and roles and responsibilities to ensure a coordinated management of the sport across all the six tiers of the game.
A key requisite under the new structure is the requirement for all of these entities and our affiliate members to have legal capacity by properly incorporating their associations.
They will all be required to adopt the constitutions and be registered as associations under the Investment Promotion Authority Act.
Five affiliate members out of the more than 50 rugby league associations nationwide are registered with the Investment Promotion Authority.
The rest have been operating as ad-hoc associations with no legal capacity whilst none of the confederates or provincial boards have been properly established. This has led to difficulties in ensuring alignment and compliance with policies, standardsand regulations across the sport.
PNGRFL is planning to launch and implement the pilot model of the reform in the New Guinea Islands Confederate and New Ireland later this month and then we will ensure that the model is replicated across the country.
All Confederates, Provincial Boards and Affiliate associations of the PNGRFL will be required to comply with these new requirements before the start of next season to be recognised as members or participate in any PNGRFL programmes.
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Until next week, may the grace, love and care of our Good Lord be with you.

Cheers,
Sandis