PNG Games weeks away, organisers confident

THE country’s largest multi-sport event is 10 weeks away and so far all seems to be going well in terms of preparations.
The PNG Games, from March 18 to April 1, will open on the same weekend when the Q-Cup heads into Round 3 – the Hunters play the Souths Logan Magpies in Brisbane so most of the domestic focus should be on Kimbe, West New Britain.
Despite reports of a delay in the construction of the main grand stand of the San Remo Stadium (because money had not been paid to the builder) have apparently been resolved as host organising committee deputy chairman Dacca Wagai stated this week.
That is good news and it will do a lot for the confidence of participating teams.
One hopes the province can actually pull this event off in terms of hosting and providing  the ample accommodation, services and running a 24-sport event over a two-week period.
It’s a tall ask, that’s why it was interesting that there were some who were against the deferral of the Games from last November to March, 2017.
That was five extra months to fine tune and iron out all the kinks. So by that logic, the PNG Games should be good to go in 70 days time.
But it would be silly not to expect problems to pop up before, during and after this event.
One of the other issues facing the PNG Games is that it falls during second half of term one of the school year.
It is not clear whether students in the different provincial teams will be given special dispensation from their schools and provincial education authorities in order to represent their provinces.
One would hope so. This is one of the reasons why events that invariably involve many young people are usually schedule during school holidays.
Hopefully, this and other obstacles can be overcome and the 7th PNG Games can be the great event everyone wants it to be.