Risks and rewards of playing diplomatic football in the Pacific

It is a sporting and diplomatic moment nearly two decades in the making and carries significance well beyond the white lines marking Port Moresby's National Football Stadium.

In early 2029, Jarome Luai, a four-time premiership player with the Penrith Panthers, a NSW Origin representative and Samoan international, will likely lead the PNG Chiefs onto the field in their first NRL match.

For many rugby league-mad Papua New Guineans, having their team compete against the game's very best has been a long-held dream.

But it is also a strategic statement made by Australia and Papua New Guinea.

The deal comes with an invisible string: an unwritten understanding that if Papua New Guinea signs a security pact with China, the club will be pulled.

In the midst of a contest for influence in the Pacific that senior Australian figures describe as a "knife fight", it demonstrates the government's willingness to use every soft power lever at its disposal.

Over 10 years $600 million is being spent, with just over half of that funding to go towards establishing the PNG Chiefs, and the rest to developing rugby league in Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Samoa and Fiji.

The leaders of Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga, spotted together on the sidelines of the State Origin decider in Brisbane this week, landed in Australia to announce the details of how all that money would be distributed.

The federal government acknowledges it is a remarkable injection of taxpayer funds into the development of one code of football but argues the dividends will be absolutely worthwhile.

A long-held rugby league dream

In late 2008, then-prime minister Sir Michael Somare started speaking publicly about his ambition to have a Papua New Guinea NRL side enter the competition by 2020.

That eventually turned into a pledge from the then-Rudd government in Australia to help develop the game in Papua New Guinea, with the ambition of one day seeing an NRL side.

The PNG Hunters have played in the Queensland Cup, a second-tier competition below the NRL, since 2014 and won the premiership in 2017.

In 2018, the now-Minister for Pacific Island Affairs, Pat Conroy, helped lead a push for a Papua New Guinea NRL side into Labor's official party platform.

He said seeing the side become a reality was something that for a long time seemed impossible.

"It has been challenging, not because people were opposed to the idea, but because people just saw all the barriers, all the difficulties, all the complications to it," he said.

"So lots of people thought it was a good idea, but it would never happen.

"Having two national governments really committed to it, as well as the NRL leaning in, has made it happen."

And there is another key ingredient to making the deal work — money.

Mr Conroy said the government was acutely aware that spending $600 million in taxpayer funds to essentially build a football club was unusual.

But he said there was a widespread recognition that the funding was not about sport; it was about relationships and influence.

"Part of [the case for the funding] was a strong recognition within Australia that we needed to move closer to the Pacific Island region, that we need to work closer with the Pacific family, and use every avenue of statecraft to do that," Mr Conroy said.

"[That] created the space for this deal to be done."

Bond University sports diplomacy expert Stuart Murray said it was a simple case of Australia diplomatically playing to its strengths.

"A country like Australia is, in terms of its economy, trade and security, a sort of middle power," Dr Murray said.

"But when we think about sport, we're an absolute superpower in terms of our success, our assets, our expertise in coaching and developing sport and the business of it.

"So other countries want that. It's something we can trade. It's also part of our image and our brand."

An unusual expansion

Competitions like the NRL or AFL have looked for new markets to try to convince when seeking to grow their games in the past.

They have scoped out cities or regions with a large population and a strong interest in sport, hopeful of creating new fans.

Tim Harcourt, a specialist in the economics of sport from the University of Technology, Sydney, said that was part of what made the PNG expansion unusual.

"It's not like the AFL trying to go into Western Sydney or the NRL trying to go down to Melbourne," Professor Harcourt said.

"You know, it's a ready-made audience."

Rugby league is often described as the official religion of Papua New Guinea and a unifying force in a highly diverse country, made up of more than 1,000 tribes and 800 languages.

Prime Minister James Marape said the club's name, the Chiefs, was picked to try to reflect the power of rugby league to unite the country.

"This is more than sport, it is nationhood expressed through rugby league," he said last October.

The club is not without its critics in Papua New Guinea, however.

Mr Marape has come under fire from political opponents for being too focused on promoting the club and attracting players, trying to distract voters with "bread and circuses", rather than dealing with domestic problems.

Some Papua New Guineans have questioned whether the Australian and Papua New Guinean funding supporting the club could be better spent.

While the club's new management sparked criticism online when it proposed setting up a dedicated school for the children of players and staff relocating, with some claiming it was "segregation".

The club has since made clear it is not building a school, but players, staff and coaches will live in a resort-style compound within the city.

Concerns over opportunity missed

There is a quiet confidence in Australian government circles that the success of rugby league diplomacy is deeply frustrating China.

And there is some evidence it is being noticed.

The Global Times, a Chinese English-language state media outlet, quoted a Chinese academic suggesting the sports diplomacy push was an effort to "shore up [Australia's] fading dominance".

But where Australia has invested in rugby league, China has spotted an opening in rugby union.

Last year, Fiji Rugby signed a memorandum of understanding with China Rugby.

While rugby league is absolutely dominant in Papua New Guinea, rugby union remains the dominant game in Fiji, and has a stronghold in Tonga and Samoa.

Fiji's men's rugby sevens side has won two Olympic gold medals, and its national rugby union side is ranked ninth in the world, just one spot below Australia.

Jenny Seeto from Fiji Rugby told the ABC the decision to sign a financial agreement with China was made to help secure the game's future.

"It's not more diplomacy for us; it's more the financial security of Fiji Rugby," she told the ABC.

Australia is investing in rugby union in the region. It is a financial backer of the Fijian Drua, the country's men's and women's Super Rugby side.

More than $20 million in further funding for rugby in Fiji was committed as part of the Vuvale Union, signed in Fiji last week.

But Dr Murray said rugby union risked being a significant missed opportunity for Australia.

"There's a well-known story going around that although [Australia] pay for the Fijian Drua, the team bus has got a 'China Aid' sign on the side of it," he said.

"So even though we pay for the team, China's kind of snuck in and got its China Aid signs all over the team bus.

"So China's starting to creep into this area."

Leaders in Tonga, Samoa and Fiji made a pitch for $150 million in funding for rugby union last year, amid fears the game would suffer as rugby league rode a wave of funding.

Liberal senator Jess Collins, formerly a Lowy Institute expert on Pacific diplomacy, said the government risked, in parts of the Pacific, placing all of its eggs in the wrong sporting basket.

"Anthony Albanese has joined forces with [Australian Rugby League Commission Chair] Peter V'landys to replace the national sport of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga with NRL," Senator Collins said.

"Rugby Union will be driven further into the arms of China, and we have Albanese's clumsy approach to Pacific diplomacy to blame."

A mammoth task ahead

When the PNG Chiefs were launched, speculation immediately swirled around how the club would recruit players, coaches and staff to leave Australia and move their lives to Port Moresby.

Through a combination of significant recruitment efforts, and the lure of hefty tax breaks in both Papua New Guinea and Australia, progress has so far been remarkably good.

The club has lured a premiership player in Jarome Luai, the game's highest-ever try scorer (and PNG international) in Alex Johnston, and Roosters hooker and Blues representative Connor Watson.

But Dr Murray said the enormous challenges ahead for the club, and the extraordinary diplomatic weight it was carrying, should not be downplayed.

"It's no secret PNG has got these very, very challenging security issues from local corruption to violence to a whole raft of security issues," he said.

"There's a massive amount of development that needs to go with this — training, security, all these sorts of things, and none of that's been decided as it stands."

Mr Conroy argues it is an opportunity Australia and the Pacific cannot, and will not, allow to fail.

"It is a religion. It's absolute religion [in the Pacific]," he said.

"And part of it is that they see people like them dominating a sport. Fifty per cent of NRL players are of Pacifica heritage. In terms of the total Australian population, only about 3 per cent of Australians are of Pacifica heritage, yet 50 per cent of players are of Pacifica heritage.

"They see people who might come from their same country or they might know someone dominating sport. So they have a cultural affinity to it."