Southern Confederation Club Championships gearing up

Southern Confed participants, Saroa Raider, primed for championships.

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, November 6, 2016 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

THE Southern Confederation is gearing up for it rugby league club championship to be held this month in both Gulf and Central Provinces respectively.

Indication of the regional event was made known during the awards presentation of Rigo Rugby premiers and championship participant, Saroa Raiders last weekend, in Port Moresby.

Southern Confederation Chairman, Gwaibo Mairi, said a total of 16 club champion teams from 16 affiliated competitions, to the PNG Rugby Football League, in the region will go head to head to determine two representatives to the national club championships tournament.

Games will begin in the Gulf capital of Kerema and end at Kwikila in the Rigo District of Central Province.

“In the tournament we have got 16 teams that will participate, 8 get eliminated, and the next 8 go to Kwikila for the next round of eliminations. After that it is four teams, and after the 4 playoffs the two will represent the region,” Mairi said.

“All the teams are from affiliate leagues to Papua New Guinea Rugby Football League. This is all eliminations rounds because we have the Papua New Guinea National Club Championships.”

“The two winners in each confederate, that is Highlands, Northern, Islands, and Southern so out of the four confederates we are going to send two teams each to the national club championships.”

He said apart from the majority of teams from Central, the only teams outside are from Gulf with 2 teams, Western Province, and NCD with four teams.

“Preparations are going well, we have our second meeting on Wednesday, 2nd of November and then we finalize the draws.”

“The Governor for Gulf has committed K50,000, and I am going to make an appeal to business houses to get support from them to run the program,” Mairi added.

He pointed out that the tournament was to take champion teams to another level to test their level of competition against regional top teams who will then take on the rest of the country.

“It is another stage after being the premiers of your affiliate, so we are just testing the strength of affiliates from their normal competitions and winning them, to participate amongst the winners so we can make our programs exciting.”