Posted By Staff Reporter
NATIONAL Zone players will be considered for places in the Papua New Guinea Rugby League Foundation’s train-on squad for the Queensland Cup next year.
PNGRLF chief executive officer Brad Tassell said the national zone championship, that begins in Lae today, provided talented players outside of the Digicel Cup a realistic pathway to representative honours. “We’ll be looking at identifying players from this national zone championship for our Queensland Cup train-on squad,” Tassell said from Lae yesterday. “We’ll know later this month if we are in the Q Cup and we’ll go from there.” Tassell said the zone championship was revived this year at the behest of leagues around the country because it gave players from the wider league community access to high level football and a chance to press for representative honours. “From our meetings with leagues around the country, they all wanted a return of the zone challenge because it was one of the few chances their players had of playing representative matches.” Tassell said zone players would also be considered for the Team Kumuls programme next year as the PNG Rugby Football League-sponsored annual championship established itself as the premier national competition. “Players we identify will eventually be included in the Team Kumuls programme for next year,” Tassell said. “Unfortunately, it won’t be possible to incorporate them into the Team Kumuls programme now with it being a World Cup year but we will look to have zone players involved in camps next year. Adrian (Lam) is supportive of this plan. We’ll have a representative zone side picked and in the future this team will play an emerging Kumuls team as part of the national development programme that we are working on having in place,” Tassell said. Comments are closed.
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