Posted By Staff Reporter
THE Papua New Guinea Kumuls have a great chance of improving their standing in the Rugby League International Federation’s world rankings after Samoa’s big losses to Australia and New Zealand, and Tonga’s loss to England last week. If the Justin Holbrook-coached side beat Fiji Bati in the two upcoming two tests of the Pacific Championship Bowl, they could leap-frog Tonga and Samoa and secure the fourth spot. The Kumuls are currently ranked sixth ahead of Bati (No.7) while Tonga is fifth. The top four countries are world champions Australia (No.1), New Zealand (No.2), Samoa (No.3) and England (No.4). Tonga lost to England 18-22 in the opening game of their three-test series and losses in the remaining tests could see Kumuls move up depending on their result against the Bati over the next two tests.
Samoa lost 12-32 to Australia before they were thrashed 0-50 by New Zealand to exit the Pacific Championship Cup tournament last week. Toa Samoa are set to fall in the rankings as a result of those results. “All we can do is play well and win the next two games against Fiji and then things will hopefully shift in our favour,” Holbrook said on Tuesday. “You can’t control the results of other games with the other nations, we can only control ourselves so if we can put in two good performance over the next two weeknds, whoever is in charge of that (IRLF rankings) can shuffle us up a bit.” PNG was ranked No.5 before the 2022 World Cup but only dropped down one spot following Samoa’s rise at the tournament which saw them make a fairytale run all the way to the cup final as they jumped from sixth to third in the rankings. Statement/TheNational/PNGSportsNews Also read Comments are closed.
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