Leigh Leopards’ Lachlan Lam stars as Papua New Guinea set up New Zealand showdown

Leigh Leopards Lachlan Lam starred as Papua New Guinea beat Cook Islands to move to within 80 minutes of Pacific Championships promotion. The Kumuls claimed the Pacific Championships Bowl with a 42-20 win in Port Moresby and will now take on New Zealand next week for a place in next year’s Pacific Championships Cup.

Lam, who was captaining his country for the first time, scored a try and set three more up in the contest to take the game away from the Cook Islands, who led 14-4 at one stage of the first half. The Leigh man also broke six tackles, made one line break and made 117 running metres in a man of the match worthy performance.

Elijah Roltinga got PNG off the mark after just five minutes, but Cook Islands, who had Salford Red Devils recruit Esan Marsters playing at full-back and former Hull KR man Brad Takairangi in the halves, hit back. Davvy Moale got their first before Steven Marsters touched down to establish a first half lead.

PNG’s woes were compounded as Castleford Tigers’ Sylvester Namo was sent to the sin-bin, but that didn’t prevent the home side fighting back as Nene Macdonald and Lam scored to reclaim the lead just before the break.

Robert Derby and Namo got over in the opening minutes of the second half before Roltinga and Macdonald completed braces. Morea Morea sealed the convincing victory with a try of his own to book a place in Sunday’s promotion/relegation showdown with New Zealand at the Western Sydney Stadium.

The Kiwis will be the favourites but Papua New Guinea will be flying high in confidence after winning the Bowl in convincing fashion.

“It’s very special, it’s not something we take lightly and as a nation we just want to keep winning and doing our best every time we get the opportunity,” Lam said on taking the captaincy and picking up the win. “Test matches don’t come around too often and now that this Pacific Bowl and Championships have come in it’s given us a chance to represent our country from NRL and Super League and the Queensland Cup, it gives us special moments like the win, but also we get to showcase people like Morea coming in, giving him an opportunity to show what he can do.

“It’s always good to score tries but especially at the NFS. It was a special one and in a period we were struggling and it got us into half-time in better shape than we were before. It was my first one in a couple of games, too, so good to get the monkey off the back.”

Leigh Leopards coach Adrian Lam was in attendance in Port Moresby, with Lachlan adding: “He presented the jerseys last night and it was a little bit emotional and we did a pretty good job to get no tears out. He made a big effort to come over and watch and I’m very appreciative of that. He hasn’t watched me play live for PNG for a couple of years so it’s good to see him out here and to present the boys with the jerseys, it was pretty cool.”