{"id":210160,"date":"2025-06-24T10:44:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T10:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/210160\/"},"modified":"2025-06-24T10:44:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T10:44:18","slug":"new-png-franchise-will-offer-nrl-players-a-permanent-holiday-says-peter-vlandys-nrl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/210160\/","title":{"rendered":"New PNG franchise will offer NRL players a \u2018permanent holiday\u2019, says Peter V\u2019landys | NRL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian Rugby League Commission chair Peter V\u2019landys has claimed players \u201cand their wives\u201d will be on a \u201cpermanent holiday\u201d when the Papua New Guinea expansion side makes its scheduled NRL<\/a> entrance in 2028, and promised \u201cresort-style\u201d accommodation attractive to the talent required to be competitive in the club\u2019s first season.<\/p>\n

The rugby league tsar has assured PNG prime minister James Marape the team will make the top eight in its first year in 2028, a deadline which V\u2019landys said was \u201cabsolutely\u201d going to be met.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve looked at some sites today for the accommodation, we\u2019ve looked at the centre of excellence, and we\u2019re very impressed with what\u2019s available,\u201d he said on Tuesday at the announcement of the new club\u2019s board.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to make this a resort-style area for our players and their wives, so they\u2019re going to be on a permanent holiday when they\u2019re over, except when they play and train.<\/p>\n

\u201cOtherwise, they\u2019re going to take the natural beauty of Papua New Guinea in and enjoy it because it\u2019s a beautiful country, and they will enjoy it in a resort style.\u201d<\/p>\n

The board of the new franchise is made up of former Canterbury chairman Ray Dibb, former Kumul Marcus Bai and Wapu Sonk, the managing director of Kumul Petroleum who was chairman of the bid, which received the green light in December.<\/p>\n

Digicel executive Lorna McPherson, Mayur Resources chair Richard Pegum, chair of the QRL\u2019s PNG Hunters and food and beverage industry veteran Stan Joyce and Ian Tarutia, president of the PNG Chamber of Commerce & Industry, fill the other positions.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of them are residents of Papua New Guinea, they know the business sector here, they know the ecosystems here, we\u2019re very confident in their ability to deliver and I think they\u2019ll be very competitive in the very first year,\u201d V\u2019landys said.<\/p>\n

The franchise is being partly funded by a $600m, 10-year commitment from the Australian government to rugby league in PNG and the Pacific. The PNG government is also making financial contributions in the form of infrastructure investment and tax concessions.<\/p>\n

V\u2019landys said there was a clause in the deal allowing it to be terminated \u201cif there\u2019s a termination of the security agreement\u201d between the two countries.<\/p>\n

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Pacific Island affairs minister, Pat Conroy, said Australia was \u201cincredibly reassured\u201d by statements from PNG about its security intentions and a new defence treaty is being negotiated that would expand on the existing bilateral security agreement. \u201cThe security future of both countries is entwined together very closely,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Marape said the countries had shared interests. \u201cWe\u2019re not far apart, we\u2019re close by, at the moment we\u2019re working on a bilateral security treaty with Australia that will take precedence over any other security relationships,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The new franchise is able to sign players for a 2028 start from the end of next season, and is expected to target high-profile players such as Melbourne Storm and Queensland Origin winger Xavier Coates, who was born in Port Moresby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian Rugby League Commission chair Peter V\u2019landys has claimed players \u201cand their wives\u201d will be on a \u201cpermanent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-210160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114737936394826170","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}