Tatana Island Vikings win Pepsi Nines in Port Moresby

Sports

By ROBINSON LEKA
TATANA Island Vikings claimed the inaugural Pepsi Nines title on Saturday following a 31-24 win over Moresby South’s Waidex in the Cup final at Sir Hubert Murray Stadium.
A star-studded Vikings outfit, boasting the likes of Digicel Cup stars Tommy Moide, Adam Korave, Junior Belo and Ben Wemin, proved too strong for Waidex despite a narrow 18-19 score line at halftime.
Belo was named as the man of the match following a superb performance at five-eighth with Vikings winger and Gulf Isou centre Makara Hura claiming the tournament’s top point scorer.
Tatana ran clear of their opponents with three tries in the second half to hold off Waidex to bag the K10,000 cash prize.
Hetoa Steelers, from Hanuabada, claimed the Plate and K5,000 while Konedobu’s Harbour City Tornadoes claimed the Bowl and K2,500.
Tournament host and Deputy National Capital District Governor Dadi Toka Jr said the inaugural event was a success with more emphasis on Motu-Koitabu tourneys to follow.
“We were supposed to hold the tournament last year, but due to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) everything got re-adjusted and we did the same for the nines schedule,” he said.
“The finals are an amazing culmination between the team at Pepsi and the organising committee of the nines tournament.
“We have over 40 teams enquire, but we could only fit in 32 in the end just to make it manageable since it was the first time to run this tournament and we wanted to get an understanding of how to run it in the future.
“There are going to be more nines tournaments such as this and we want to do more for talent identification in the Motu-Koitabu communities.”