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PNG NRLW team still on the cards, but not in 2028
Jasper Bruce, AAP • December 13th, 2024 12:00 pm
Photo: Mark Evans/AAP
A women's team remains part of Papua New Guinea's expansion plans but is no chance of entering the NRLW the same year as the men.
The rugby league-mad Pacific nation had its NRL dream granted when the Australian and PNG Prime Ministers met in Sydney on Thursday to announce a team will join the league after two years of negotiations.
A PNG men's team will enter the NRL in 2028, propped up by $600 million in Australian taxpayer funding.
But less certain is the future of a mooted women's team.
Unlike rival competition the AFLW, the NRLW has largely taken a slow-and-steady approach to expansion, reluctant to aim for parity with the 17 men's-team competition without first growing its talent pool.
The league will take that same outlook towards expansion into PNG, where formal women's rugby league programs are lagging behind the men.
While PNG's Digicel ExxonMobil Cup for men was founded in 1990, the Santos Cup, a corresponding semi-professional women's competition, only played its first season this year.
The gap between the national PNG women's team and its rivals was laid bare in the recent Pacific Championships where Australia thrashed the Orchids 84-0.
The side went on to lose 36-0 to New Zealand later in the tournament.
Australian Rugby League Commission chair Peter V'landys said a PNG NRLW team would only be introduced when the league was confident it could be competitive.
"It was never going to be with the men (in 2028), it was always going to be a stage situation," he said.
"Everything we do, we want to make sure they're competitive from day one and we want to make sure the women are competitive."
The NRLW has not yet announced public plans for expansion beyond 2025, when the inclusion of Canterbury and the Warriors will grow the league to 12 teams.
But unrepresented NRL clubs including Penrith, South Sydney and Melbourne have previously flagged their hopes of being considered for expansion.
Before a PNG NRLW team can factor into expansion discussions, the bosses of the nation's NRL bid want to see a team included in the reserve-grade competition of either NSW or Queensland.
The announcement of the NRL team's inception came almost 12 years after the PNG Hunters made their Queensland Cup debut.
"What we've found is there is a little gap at the moment between where our women are compared to our boys," said PNG bid chief executive officer Andrew Hill.
"They're not playing in a Queensland competition, our women, so we've all agreed that the first step should be to take from a national Santos Cup competition in PNG into a domestic, state-based competition in Australia and then to the NRLW.
"From the very start, the ambition was always to have a women's team (in the NRLW). That ambition is still there and the commitment for both us and the NRL is to have a women's team.
"It will happen, it just won't happen in 2028."
The passion for rugby league continues to grow in Papua New Guinea
