Rugby league inspires Kapipi

WRITING out of love and passion for rugby league has converted and inspired a former player and a coach into pursuing a journalism degree at the University of Papua New Guinea.
Terence Kapipi, 31, from Kumin village in Mendi, Southern Highlands, also runs a number of rugby league pages on facebook with almost a hundred thousand followers.
While a student, Kapipi played as a second rower for NK Storm in the local Mendi league from 2006 to 2009.
When he moved to Port Moresby in 2010 after completing high school, Kapipi did not get any offers from tertiary institutions.
To survive in the city, he got involved in informal businesses on streets as well as working for G4S Security as a guard.
In 2019, Kapipi registered at the Open Campus at the University of PNG (UPNG). He then saw the UPNG Rugby League competition and with his passion for the game, Kapipi took up coaching with the Souths Arts Warriors.
He guided the Warriors to the grand final against HRM Waghi Hawks which unfortunately ended in brawl with no winner declared.
Late last year, Kapipi decided to start promoting the game he loved in a different format. He created and administered social media pages for rugby league. One of his most successful page is Rugby League Romantics which has almost 30,000 followers which include Papua New Guinea internationals Dan Russel, Wellington Albert and Nene Macdonald.
Kapipi told The National last week that he wanted to create more rugby league content in mainstream media which made him to apply for journalism studies.
Fortunately, Kapipi was accepted this year and he is doing his first year in UPNG.
“When I left Mendi 10 years ago, I stopped playing rugby league,” he said.
“Though I had that passion and I follow the game closely, I did not have any opportunity to participate or play while in the city for almost eight years as I was busy doing street sales and other stuff.
“However, when I first attended the Open College at the university last year, I saw an opportunity to coach and I took it.
“I’ve never been a coach before but I learned a lot being in that role and probably it was beginner’s luck for me as our team (Arts Warriors) reached the UPNG League grand final.
“At the end of the year, I thought I should do some more for rugby league to have a satisfying feeling.
“I always read rugby league articles from NRL.com, Fox League and a number of other sites as well as watching the game and listening to commentaries.
“And I thought I should start a rugby league page and express myself.
“I started slow but as time went I built contacts, I started to put out different contents that got the attention of Facebook audiences and the following grew.
“I have other pages like the PRK Mendi Muruks fan page which also has big following from Southern Highlanders and others.
“People use to say, ‘why you spend so much time on Facebbook, looking at the phone.
“They make fun of me. But I don’t mind, I know that I want to do something that makes me happy.
“I even spend my own money on flex card every day just to update my pages.”
Kapipi said his hobby of writing, which was inspired by rugby league seemed to have led him into a profession.
“I did what I did using social media out of the passion which became my hobby.
“But it turned out that this hobby has unexpectedly exposed my skill of writing and public relations.
“I purposely streamed from open college and applied for journalism when I found out how good I was in writing thanks to that mad rugby league passion that exposed my hidden talent.
“Now there are number of organisations who are hiring me for freelancing, making press releases, photography and stuff.
“It’s unbelievable.”
While a student, Kapipi currently engages with MRDC and Imbongu district as a part time public relations officer.
Kapipi said his next target is to create a rugby league magazine before he completes his degree programme.
“I want to go the next level and that is to create a rugby league magazine.
“After completing my studies, I want to be a fulltime rugby league writer.”