Parties urged to resolve Wigmen’s home ground issue

By KEVIN TEME
INITIAL sponsor of the Hela Huli Wigmen, Islands Mobile Hire Cars (IMHC) wants parties involved in the new franchise to work together.
In an exclusive interview yesterday with IMHC general manager Samuel Dot, he confirmed that the company was still willing to support the team.
“We are the first company to come on board to support the Hela Wigmen in its initial stages and had spent a lot to help host trial games, scout and select players, prepare the team and other expenses to bring the team into the semi-professional competition,” the general manager of the Mt Hagen-based company said after reading yesterday’s story about the war over Wigmen’s home ground.
“We started it so we will still support the Wigmen, but whoever is involved in putting Wigmen’s home base in Port Moresby needs to come out and sit at a round table discussion with the interim committee which was established in 2008,” Dot said.
“ I appreciate the effort put in by those that brought the team up and would love to support if all parties can come together to discuss the best way forward for the team,” he said.
Dot said: “The Wigmen team belongs to the Hela people and I support John Kevin who, being the initiator of this idea, came out to the public to express his disappointment over the home ground of Wigmen to be in Port Moresby. I stepped in to help sponsor his team and I will continue.”
He said if there was a major sponsor for the team, he would be happy to be the minor sponsor and work together for the good of the team.
Meanwhile, interim chairman John Kevin told The National yesterday that the main idea of fielding the Wigmen team was to promote rugby league talents playing in Tari, Margarima, Koroba, Nipa, Karinj and the Hela United and Souths rugby league clubs affiliated and with the Gomis rugby football league in Mt Hagen.
IMHC was also prepared to pay for the naming rights this year, however, Kevin said he would take the matter to the court to solve it peacefully.
“I will take out a court order today and before I do that those involved including Luke Goodwin must make an attempt to call me so we can sort this out before the deadline. I can be contacted on 73176898,” Kevin said.