Townsville Blackhawks

The Hunters were slow to start in the slippery conditions but scrambled well to defend an early Blackhawks’ linebreak through the middle of the field. They couldn’t defend the consecutive knock on, penalty and six-again infringements that came next though, with Townsville capitalising on the field position to open the scoring with a well weighted grubber into the in goal for Jaelen Feeney.

The Hunters raced away to a 12-0 lead after tries from Stargroth Amean in the 4^th minute and Watson Boas in the 10^th.

The home side responded with three tries to Carlin Anderson, Paul Byrnes and then Jonathon Reuben just three minutes out from half time.

This left the score at 16-12 at the break with the Blackhawks ahead.

The second half saw no points scored until the 62^nd minute when Israel Eliab crossed over to level the score.

Marum has added young Muka Peter Kulu, Sailas Gahuna, Esau Siune and Paul Wawa in the squad.

The squad:

1. Stargroth AMEAN 2. Bland ABAVU 3. Israel ELIAB 4. Willie MINOGA  5. Butler MORRIS 6. Ase BOAS © 7. Watson BOAS 8. Wellington ALBERT 9. Wartovo PUARA JR  10. Brandy PETER 11. David LOKO 12. Nixon PUT 13. Stanton ALBERT 14. Enock MAKI 15. Moses MENINGA 16. Rhadley BRAWA  17. Karo KAUNA Jnr 18. Muka Peter KULU 19. Esau SIUNE 20. Paul WAWA 21. Sailas GAHUNA

Woolf said ball control and the fifth play options is what urgently needs to be addressed before the next game.

“Well firstly, congratulations to the Hunters. I thought they played really well. They’re obviously one of the form teams in the competition at the moment. The results certainly showed that.

“From our point of view, we’re just not where we need to be at the moment. I was really disappointed with that.

The visitors crossed the try line after two minutes of play when leading competition points scorer Carlin Anderson crossed over to score.

The Hunters responded immediately through enforcer David Loko, who sliced through the defence to score under the posts.

Buoyed on by a vocal home crowd of 6,768, the Hunters grabbed their second four-pointer through fullback Stargroth Amean, who scored in similar fashion to the first try.

The points continued to come easy with Boas kicking a penalty followed by another try to Amean in the 29th and Willie Minoga in the 33rd.

This was announced yesterday at the Cup launch by General Manager of Air Niugini, Dominic Kaumu, in the presence of officials from the PNG Rugby Football League and SP Hunters.

Kaumu explained this is to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the Kokoda Trail campaign plus the recently launched direct flights between Port Moresby and Townsville.

The challenge for the Cup will be annual.

Trailing 10-4 in the first half, the Hunters came back hard in the second half, sending in Thompson Teteh for an unconverted opener to minimise the lead to 8-10.

Blackhawks retaliated, kicking a penalty to lead to 12-8 before Andrew Niemoeller scored the 58^th minute try to further their lead to 18-8.

Ten minutes later, Edward Goma grounded the ball through a set play from Watson Boas’ grubber kick for 14-18.

Marum said after the game that Blackhawks are a quality side and it was a narrow win.

The coach admitted that they did too many errors in the second half but they were lucky to win the game by one point.

“We just have to go back to the recorded videos and see where we went wrong and we can polish up in those areas.

“We’ve won five out of six games but we still got a lot of work to do,” Marum said.

The coach added that with former Hunter Willie Minoga on the Blackhawks side, their focus was on everyone out there and not just on Minoga.

 It is a big turnout here and the crowd is quickly building up as the clock ticks down for kick off at 3pm today.

The match will be televised live on TV Wan Sports HD.

 Both teams are currently warming up for the match.

The top of the ladder clash is expected to attract a huge crowd as Hunters host their second home game.

As usual, the home team had a morning walk and is based in camp at the PNG Institute of Public Administration while the Panthers are based at the Holiday Inn Hotel.

PNG Rugby Football League chief executive officer Bob Cutmore said previously that it is tradition that teams take time off from training to prepare mentally and maintain team spirit before a game.