Maybe if you based the team in Madang - not so bad there. I suppose what they'd probably do is base the team in Cairns & fly over for the games.
Be interested to hear opinions from you blokes that have lived in or worked in PNG.
How big or small is the cultural, language and lifestyle difference to Oz?
This speculation that a PNG team will need to be based in Cairns, it makes it difficult to see how this team can be made into a success.
If I remember correctly the PNG Hunters were initially based in and played home games out of Kapoko on the smaller PNG island of New England on account of security concerns for QRL teams initially playing in Port Moresby.
Hunters now appear to be based in and playing home games out of Port and I don't recall there being major issues.
Kapoko has a population of 20k
Port Moresby 450k
So I find it hard to imagine NRL games being played else where then Port
Could a FIFI team based in Australia work?
I'm not sure an NRL squad just made up 30 ring in players all based in Australia is necessarily going to be something that will resonate with our PNG friends, just because the logo has PNG on it, at the very least it would hardly be representative of the PNG community.
On the flip side, so let's say this is a team in which the majority of the squad are current PNG men, largely from the current Hunters QRL team.
If it is considered too big an ask for say 10 or so NRL stars, marquee top and higher dollar earners, for them and there family's to be based in and live in PNG. If that is too much to expect.
Is the converse expectation much much worse?
Ie an expectation that for PNG men to play for a PNG team, potentially men currently living in Port, playing footy for the Hunters out of Port, current non stars of the game, so players that won't be paid as highly within a salary cap system, yet the expectation that such men along with their family move themselves away from home in PNG, move to Australia, that they navigate the cultural, linguistics and lifestyle differences.
All so that the highly paid or non PNG born players and there family's don't have too?
It's just food for thought.
But are Ozzie power brokers already looking at through an eliteist Ozzie lens;-)
But there sure would be some challenging dynamics with this franchise to work through.