PNG U18 Men Ready For Aussie Tour

The Papua New Guinea Under 18 Men’s National Basketball Team will head to Australia this weekend, to play international exhibition games against selected Cairns Basketball representative lineups.

PNG will face the Cairns Stingers Under 18 side at 4:30pm on Sunday afternoon, before matching up with the Cairns Marlins Under 18 squad at 5pm on Monday.

Along with the two games, the team will have a series of training sessions and will also attend the Cairns Taipans v Illawarra Hawks National Basketball League (NBL) game being held at the Cairns Convention Centre on Saturday evening.

Basketball Federation of Papua New Guinea (BFPNG) Chief Executive Officer Joel Khalu, who is also the team’s Head Coach said everybody involved was excited about the 4-day tour to Australia.

“For 10 of our 12 players, this will be the first time they’ve actually travelled overseas, so as you’d expect they’re all pretty pumped,” Khalu mentioned.

“It’s going to be a great learning curve for them, especially playing against a different style of Basketball to what they’re normally accustomed to here in PNG.”

“Both Cairns sides are extremely talented, have Queensland State junior representative players on their rosters, so games are going to present us with massive challenges. The Marlins outfit possess an athlete who recently represented Australia in the FIBA Under 17 World Championships in Spain last year, so it will be fun to see our guy’s matchup against a player of that caliber.”

“Overall it’s shaping to be a great experience and hopefully the first of many international basketball tours that these junior players will have throughout their hoops careers.”

BFPNG acknowledged the tremendous support from sponsors whose contributions made the trip possible.

“We certainly want to thank our sponsors, in particular the iPi Group and Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited, who through their generosity, made our proposed tour become a reality,” Khalu added.

For more information please contact BFPNG Chief Executive Officer Joel Khalu on khalujoel@gmail.com.




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