Papua New Guinea Hunters Head Coach Stanley Tepend says they are expecting the Kaiviti Silktails team to play smart and quick rugby league at the Melanesian Bowl on Saturday.
“The last few days were exciting for the boys and some boys haven’t traveled outside of PNG so excited for them to come across and play our Pacific brothers.”
“We expect the Fiji boys to be probably smarter and be quicker than us to test our players. I think out of the two teams, Fiji will have the youngest players and they will be a threat to us as well as giving us a tight match.”
Tepend, who joins the PNG Hunters tomorrow in Lautoka, highlighted how important the match is for the side ahead of the kick start of the Hostplus Cup in Australia next week.
“We got a few new young boys in the team from last year while some boys left us after the World Cup, moving on to the clubs in the UK and in Australia.”
“We’ve obviously been in competition for some years and we have some experienced players who have spent time in the rugby league in Australia. If anything’s taught us, just an experience of playing each week in that competition in Queensland.”
“It’ll be exciting and a good experience for us before NRL round one next week. We’ll use this as a last touch-up practice game.”
The Silktails vs PNG Hunters match will kick off at 6.30pm at Lawaqa Park in Sigatoka.
