Lam committed to PNG rugby league cause
A proud and emotional Adrian Lam has declared he'll dedicate his life to developing rugby league in Papua New Guinea following their brave World Cup campaign.
Lam, who has another 12 months on the Sydney Roosters coaching staff, revealed after his PNG team's 46-6 loss to Australia on Sunday night he'd made that commitment to his players.
"I said to the players two years ago that I would dedicate my life to trying to make the game better up there," said Lam.
"I'm passionate about that. I'm not going to shy away from that commitment. I'll do whatever it takes for that country to improve over time.
"That may be one year, five years or 10 years. I might not even see the difference in my lifetime."
Lam was immensely proud of the World Cup effort of his players who almost grabbed the upset of the tournament against England in their opening match.
PNG were originally furious at being put in the same World Cup super group as Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain.
But Lam conceded once they accepted the decision they benefited from the games played against such quality opposition.
"A year ago it was frightening to know we were in that pool, he said.
"It was like 'holy heck, what have we got ourselves into here'.
"But we accepted it and we got on with it and I think it's probably improved us by one or two levels purely because of the importance of results."
Lam said PNG needed to play more international matches to keep going forward.
"When we played New Zealand last week, I mentioned that we hadn't played them for 12 years." he said.
"Hopefully that can all change. We need to get a better international calender for all teams.
"That's the only way we're going to improve as a country.
The Kumuls went into Sunday's game in Townsville on a high after receiving their Test jumpers from PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare who told them his government had committed $20 million towards building a first class stadium in Port Moresby.
Mr Somare revealed he'd held recent talks with his Australian counterpart with the aim of both governments working together toward PNG fielding a team in the NRL.
Lam said the first step would be for PNG to play in the Queensland Cup competition by 2010.
"We obviously going to push hard for (the NRL) in 2015 but state league needs to happen first and they're talking 2010 now.
"The idea of a rugby league stadium in PNG is fantastic news for us and they (government) are going to put some money towards developing the game at the grass roots and though the villages and hopefully that will show at the next World Cup."
"If all that can go through and we can push ahead, how exciting is that?"
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