Inside PNG’s NRL deal: how the licence was won and what comes next

Into the increasing geopolitical contest of the Pacific will march a rugby league team. The $600m pledge from the Australian government to fund an NRL franchise based in Papua New Guinea was announced on Thursday by prime minister Anthony Albanese, standing alongside PNG prime minister James Marape and Australian Rugby League Commission chair Peter V’landys.

They were smiling at the announcement in Sydney, yet they were anything but in May when the deal – which had been formally discussed since 2022 – was close to falling over, just as the NRL expo “Magic Round” was beginning in Brisbane.

Related: Papua New Guinea to join NRL under historic deal with a China ‘escape clause’

To that point there had been months of talks but the parties had made little progress and V’landys had gone public on the Friday morning with his gripes. Minister for the Pacific, Pat Conroy, at an announcement that afternoon with the Queensland Reds – a club in the NRL’s rival code of rugby union – threatened to take the public’s money elsewhere.

The stakes for that meeting couldn’t have been any higher. The government needed a way to link Australia and Papua New Guinea more closely amid a flurry of investments from China in the Pacific and an increasing array of security partnerships. The NRL needed at least one well-resourced bidder to underpin expansion that would drive the next phase of growth.

And so at 10 minutes to six, away from the noisy crowds above, descending into a silent, windowless bunker walked Conroy. As Canberra and Canterbury were running onto the field upstairs, the former third-grade prop from the Central Coast was flanked by a representative of the government’s Office for the Pacific, and two staff.

Across the table sat V’landys, alongside NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo and corporate affairs head Misha Zelinsky.

“Going to that meeting, I thought there was a decent chance we’re walking away and having to explain publicly why this has fallen over, just because the size was so far apart,” Conroy said. “Peter made it very clear publicly that this was D-Day, and I was thinking, ‘well, if this is D-Day, we might not be landing this’.”

Conroy had a mandate from cabinet to negotiate the deal but it was no blank cheque. V’landys wasn’t prepared to admit a team from Port Moresby unless it was to be sufficiently resourced, but no other serious expansion bids had emerged.

The frostiness slowly subsided but the meeting dragged on without progress. There was a presentation from the government , the arguments laid out neatly across the slide deck by a bureaucrat. An impatient rugby league boss wasn’t buying it.

Instead, V’landys suggested the room got back to basics, and had each party write down how much each component of the deal – including the costs of the NRL franchise, the Pacific programs and the accommodation – should be funded across the 10 years.

Though they disagree on details, both sides now agree V’landys’ intervention was the reset negotiations needed. On the paper shared between the parties, there was enough in common to secure a handshake agreement that night, and within the following two days across meetings at Magic Round the structure of the deal had been secured.

That handshake was the culmination of more than a decade of discussion of the policy within Labor circles, and deputy prime minister Richard Marles raised what he called a “national imperative” with the NRL as early as 2008.

The thinking is logical but untested. Much has been made over whether the deal for an NRL team bars PNG from signing a security deal with China. Both governments declined to explain publicly the terms of the arrangement, but Australian officials were keen to underline the fact that they can pull the funding at any time.

Related: Lucrative tax breaks will be ‘vital’ in PNG team’s bid to attract top NRL players

At the media conference on Thursday, only Marape referred to China, and it was only a brief reference in the context of relations with Asian neighbours. “But closer to home we have this synergy, it needs to be protected,” he said.

Despite the long-awaited announcement, there remains some uncertainty. The long-form agreements have not yet been agreed. Construction of a compound – which will cost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars – is now the responsibility of the PNG government, but its design and location will prove crucial to recruitment.

Chief executive Andrew Hill believes the club does not need any headstart on negotiating with players, and will be competitive when 2028’s free agents can sign contracts from November 2026. The name and colours of the team are to be decided by the PNG community but chair of the bid Wapu Sonk confirmed that Hunters is an option.

Games will be played at the PNG Football Stadium, otherwise known as Santos Stadium, but it will need improvements to bring it into line with other NRL venues. The club has not yet committed to a date to enter the NRLW competition, hoping to develop the standard of local players in the meantime.

The NRL will control the club’s board for at least the first five years, and the Australian government has arranged for the control to shift to local representatives only when the club proves itself across multiple seasons of on-field success and off-field stability. But who actually owns the club, and how it will transition into full PNG control will be a question of national importance in two parliaments.

Albanese said the countries are now in it together: “Today is a day where people will look back in five years, 10 years, 20 years, and see that this was a day where the relationship between our nations was cemented even further.”