Wawens Cup soccer comp into playoffs

By LARRY ANDREW
IN its fifth year running, the Wawens Cup attracted 25 men’s teams and seven Under-17 teams for the 2018 festive soccer tournament.
The one-week tournament started on Tuesday and ends this weekend.
The Wawens Cup is the initiative of Andrew Namuesh, who with his family, has sponsored the tournament over the last five years.
Apart from the Namuesh family, Manolos sponsored the competition.
Tournament coordinator Alex Toki said the senior men’s teams were placed in four categories with pool A fielding seven teams while the other pools had six teams each.
Outside teams taking part in the tournament are from Eastern Highlands Wantoks (Goroka) and Crusaders (Kainantu) and Madseman from Madang comprising of youths from Sagalau.
“Most teams are from Lae and the surrounding areas making up the number to 25,”Toki said.
“For the women, only two showed interest as the rest did not turn up and we had to call the women’s games off.
“The senior men’s games are played in pool while U17 the games are in round robin format.”
“We started the tournament on Tuesday and will complete the games by Friday.
“We will complete all our pool games on Saturday and on Sunday we will have the quarter finals, the semis and then the grandfinal,” Toki said.
After the two days of football the standings in Pool A have Medics on six points after winning their two games followed by PS United and Lasitiwa who are on three points.
Wawens Green lead the Pool B with six points, followed by Luna Fox (4) and NIPS (3).
In the Pool C, Madseman from Madang are on six points, Samba (Tamigidu) and Ewa from Erap are on four points each.
In Pool D, B-Tech, Kamis and Unitech all on three points from a win each.