PNG Games must be relevant

 IN 2012 Kokopo, East New Britain, hosted the fifth Papua New Guinea Games. 

It was a successful event in that the participation rates for the event were very good despite being hosted in the New Guinea Islands. 

Around 7,000 athletes and officials from each of the country’s 21 provinces attended the games. 

Even Hela and Jiwaka, two newly christened provinces at the time, enthusiastically sent teams to the “Grassroots Games”. 

The Kokopo Games were hailed as one of the best ever, even eclipsing Port Moresby’s effort in 2009. 

It was one of the most expensive games with the developing of facilities and venues costing the state some K15 million. 

Provincial teams that travelled to New Britain had at least half their travelling expenses subsidised by the state. 

Corporate support played its part but at the end of the day the state was the chief financier of the event. 

This year the two-year cycle rolls around again with Lae to host the sixth edition of theses national games. 

There are exactly 293 days to go before the opening ceremony on November 16. 

The word is that this time around the state will not be as lavish in its spending on the event primarily because a huge chunk of state appropriations have been earmarked and committed to getting the nation’s capital ready for the Pacific Games in July next year. 

With the nation’s focus on the Pacific Games sports organisations could make the mistake of looking too far ahead and tripping over the immediate obstacle in front of them. 

Certainly, the Kokopo experience was not all smooth sailing but not necessarily because of the venues or the quality of administration that was afforded by the hosts. 

The main problem at the games, besides the issues with information dissemination and the efficient management of the individual sports, was that many provinces flouted the rules of the games by not sending their best athletes or the ones who had the most potential to make the next step to national honours. 

Unfortunately, many pro­vincial teams were allowed to send inadequately prepared athletes and men and women who really had no right to be competing in a supposedly high quality event. 

This contempt for “giving your best to produce the best” diluted the strength and quality of the events. 

Provinces that did have athletes who met the criteria to participate in certain sports needed to bide their time and wait for future games but this was not the case. 

In the interests of an all-inclusive theme many lower grade athletes were allowed to compete with others who were well above them in ability. 

Champion sprinter Toea  Wisil will forever be linked to the Grassroots Games be­cause this was where she was discovered in the early 2000s. 

But the question must now be asked, where is the next Toea Wisil? 

It has been a decade since Wisil turned heads as a barefoot runner from the Jiwaka region of the Western Highlands but what about the other talented athletes waiting to be discovered?  

If you take athletics one of the cornerstones of any major sporting event many anomalies were noted by the code’s administrators that needed addressing. 

In a report to the PNG Sports Foundation, the state body that runs the PNG Games, Athletics PNG highlighted fact that there was little return for a great amount of effort, forcing organisers to reexamine the concept and relevance of the event. 

Lae may not be a fertile ground for unearthing talent for but the least organisers should be looking at is that it provides the opportunity for serious competition.