Kumuls' coup rebuilds nation's pride

The Rugby League World Cup has become the focus of anentire country.

The Rugby League World Cup has become the focus of anentire country.

Dennis Kosam had the biggest assignment of his broadcasting career on Monday night. As he described Papua New Guinea's progress into the quarter-finals of the Lincoln Financial World Cup from the South of France, he knew that around three-quarters of the nation's three and a half million people would be clustered around their radios in the early hours of the morning, hanging on every word, every tackle, every pass.

This is, after all, the country where air traffic controllers once left their desks to watch a State of Origin match from Australia; the only country on earth where rugby league is indisputably the national sport.

"I don't think there will be many going to work today," Kosam said. "It's party time.

"People back home said when we left that they wouldn't accept anything less than the quarter-finals. The Kumuls have a history of not winning games away from home, but now they've won three World Cup pool games in a row. It'salready a sensation."

When the PNG coach, Bob Bennett, revealed that the players had received a good luck message from the Prime Minister by fax, someone asked under his breath whether Adrian Lam was not the Prime Minister. He could be if he wanted to be. As PNG captain but also a high-profile player in Australia, it was probably Lam that the air traffic controllers were intent on watching.

At the end of Monday night's match at St Estÿve, when PNG beat Tonga 30-22 to reach the last eight, Lam drew his players together in the middle of the pitch and told them that they had rebuilt their country.

There were multiple layers of meaning behind that emotional statement. Seven years ago, one of its most prosperous areas - and one of its strongest for rugby league - was ravaged by a volcano. The threat of another earlier this year sent another of the side's stars, Marcus Bai, dashing home to help evacuate his village.

On a much less serious, but still painful level, PNG's last outing before the World Cup was a record 86-0 beating by Australia. "Against Australia, we embarrassed ourselves. In this World Cup, we've regained our pride," Lam said.

Since the mid-90s, Lam and Bennett have been the double act that has guided the national team through some difficult times that have mirrored the whole national experience.

"People in Papua New Guinea live with a lot of adversity. This is such a great lift for the country as a whole," said Bennett, an Australian who served with the police in PNG's rugged and frequently warlike Highlands and coached at club level there before taking on the national job.

He is also the brother of the most successful coach in the world, the Brisbane Broncos' Wayne Bennett, although the similarities between the famously dour Wayne and the knockabout Bob - who resembles no one as much as a tropical Russ Abbott - is not obvious to the naked eye.

It has been said that Bob's personality and Wayne's ability would be the perfect combination. That is less than fair to both of them, but it is hard to imagine the Brisbane boss cheerfully sorting out matters like snakes in rooms and inter-tribal feuds in the way that the PNG coach has had to.

Monday was a night that made it all worthwhile. "I've had good times coaching PNG," Bennett said. "The difference this time is that we've won games away from home in Europe and that just doesn't happen. That's what's got them going there."

It was also a night that showed that PNG could win without Lam necessarily having to do the whole job himself. "They did their homework on me," said the Kumul scrum-half, who joins Wigan in January, of their Tongan opponents. "I was expecting that. I knew somebody else was going to have to win that game for us."

That somebody else turned out to be Stanley Gene, who has spent the last five seasons on Humberside, with Hull KR and latterly, Hull in Super League.

"It was funny really," Lam said. "I saw the Hull chief exec, Shane Richardson, in the crowd and I told Stanley. 'Is he?' he said. 'I've got to have a big game then'."

That was what he did, scoring two tries and setting up another. "It's such a happy night," said Gene afterwards. "We had a message from the Prime Minister, you know."

It is hard to imagine any of the British sides getting quite such a boost from a fax from Tony Blair, but their players have not been through the tribulations, on and off the field, that the Kumuls have. Neither is it possible, however this tournament may yet catch the imagination of the public here, that three-quarters of the population will be glued to their games.

"It [the quarter-final against Wales] will be on live TV on Sunday and there won't be a person not watching," Bennett said. "And the Prime Minister wants to give us a ticker-tape reception. They don't seem to realise we haven't won anything yet."