No fears for Aiton from Super League crowd

LONDON: PAUL Aiton fears nothing Super League crowds may throw at him after playing in PNG.
The Wakefield hooker is captain of the Pacific island where rugby league is the national sport.
Matches there often see riots among thousands of fans who cannot get in the packed grounds, with police firing bullets and tear gas to disperse them.
And it is not unusual for weapons to be seized from supporters and rocks to be thrown on to the pitch.
Aiton, 26, said: “I have got a video of one match where there were about 10,000 to 20,000 people in the ground.
“It was hard to tell as you couldn’t fit any more in and there was double that outside it.
“We played in Lae, which is a 10-hour drive, and the fans all came down the night before.
“You couldn’t walk down the street as people were stopping you all the time and you couldn’t go anywhere after the game. It’s full-on, I have never experienced anything like it.”
Aiton moved to Queensland when he was six with his Papuan mother and Australian father but he still has plenty of relatives in Papua New Guinea – and the living standards are a lot different. He added:
“My mum has family living in the mountains and I stayed there for two weeks. They just live in huts. There’s no running water or electricity, no toilets, it’s just a hole in the ground – and they only speak Tok Pisin.
“Water comes from a stream and you can’t get any mobile phone signal. It was a getaway and I really enjoyed it.”
Aiton, who lines up against Bradford Bulls, has settled in England after staying with teammate Dean Collis for his first few weeks here.
Wakefield have made an encouraging start after a pre-season that saw 18 new players come in, including Aiton and Collis.
But Aiton’s spell as Aussie centre Collis’ lodger is over now.
And Collis revealed: “I was Paul’s chauffeur for a month-and-a-half.
“He was living at my house for a while too. I was cooking him dinner and tidying up after him.
“I was his mum for a few weeks!”