Coronavirus: PNG football adapting to the "new normal"

The Papua New Guinea Football Association is awaiting a cash injection from FIFA and Oceania Football as it attempts to navigate "the new normal" created by Covid-19.

All football activities in the country were put on hold six weeks ago in response to the coronavirus pandemic while competitions will remain suspended for at least another month.

Papua New Guinea has eight confirmed cases of the coronavirus and PNGFA General Secretary Dimirit Mileng said the outbreak has disrupted their whole operation.

"We use a lot of facilities that are owned by the [Papua New Guinea] Sports Foundation in terms of carrying out our activities so those facilities have been on lockdown at the moment and that has also compounded our problems with running our programmes, but we couldn't be doing anything contrary to orders issued by the government because then we are not helping the cause."

PNGFA staff are still receiving their full salaries and Dimirit Mileng said they are keeping themselves busy despite a scaled-down presence in their Port Moresby offices in order to comply with the required social distancing measures.

"Currently we are working on a number of things that we needed to do that we sort of put on the shelf - we've brought them out and we're working on those. In terms of stqaff in the office: we meet twice every week because our public transport system has also been down, especially in Port Moresby at the moment."

World governing body FIFA announced last week that each of its 211 member associations would receive US$500,000 in the coming days as well as any remaining entitlements for 2019 and 2020 to help negate the economic impact of Covid-19.

Dimirit Mileng says the PNGFA is also finalising its application to Oceania Football's Solidarity Fund, with each member country eligible to receive up to NZ$50,000.

"We are grateful for OFC because [without them] we couldn't support some of our staff, especially our volunteers and part-timers who have been helping with the activities that we have."

"In many cases some of our guys actually rely on those weekend activities to have something for their family and stuff like this, because once this is taken away it's a struggle."

The PNG National Soccer League was suspended in mid March with Vitiaz United the surprise leaders after 10 rounds. Meanwhile regional events such as the OFC Under 16 women's championship and OFC Men's Nations Cup have either been postponed or cancelled.

Dimirit Mileng says some teams have been able to resume training this week after the government relaxed some rules around gatherings.

He says coaching and referee courses will resume in time and his organisation remains hopeful they will be able to restart local competitions in the second half of the year.

Although he admits they are still scratching their heads as to how best to navigate running a contact sport in a coronavirus landscape.

"We all are waiting for the government to uplift some of the restrictions that are in place and they are doing that slowly at the moment, so hopefully things will get back to normal [soon]. Maybe in mid May we will know a little bit more about where our position is in terms of the virus across the country."

"The government has given us until June to uplift the state of emergency but in the meantime they are relaxing some of the orders that have been issued and so we are hoping that by June we should know exactly what is happening.

But, in saying that, we might have to find a new normal as everybody is talking about across the globe at the moment. If you live with the virus but then you do things slightly differently to how we've doing things previously," he said.

PNGFA Delay Congress

The Papua New Guinea Football Association has blamed the coronavirus pandemic for the decision to postpone its Congress until June.

The Congress, which will include the election of office bearers for a new four-year term, was originally scheduled to take place last Friday, 24 April.

PNGFA General Secretary Dimirit Mileng said it was important to comply with the national government directive on the declaration of the State of Emergency throughout the country.

"As a responsible organization, the PNGFA will continue to take heed of the SoE directives and orders, therefore it was not practical to stage the Congress as per the earlier decision, he said.

Mileng said the decision was made after seeking consideration and endorsement of the Executive Committee with the consent of the President, John Kapi Natto, through email correspondence to rescind their previous decision and appoint new date.

"We have further sought the consent of our International Partners OFC and FIFA, and they've acknowledged the decision."