Mount Hagen Eagles trainer Stanley Akinu has been banned for life by the Papua New Guinea National Rugby League board after assaulting the referee following his team's defeat by the Agmark Gurias in last month's Digicel Cup semi-finals.
Two Eagles players were handed10-year bans, with four Gurias players fined and given five-match suspensions for retaliating.
The Western Highlands franchise has been suspended from the Digicel Cup for three years.
Papua New Guinea's Minister for Sport, Justin Tkatchenko, told Vinnie Wylie that strong public pressure helped the PNGNRL make their decision.
Transcript
JUSTIN TKATCHENKO: I see now that Western Highlanders have banded together to condemn the actions of one or two individuals spoiling their name and as I said from day one, it doesn't matter where you come from or who you are in Papua New Guinea, the situation is that we condone violence in sport at the highest level, and we must never ever tolerate such behaviour ever again, no matter who you are. So the PNG NRL have banned those culprits for life, which is justified and three years for the Hagen Eagles, banned from the competition. Apparently, they are appealing that decision but we've got to look at the facts and figures of the behaviour of the team over this season, and we cannot tolerate such behaviour in our local level competition as such. We just can't allow one or two individuals to spoil it all for the majority. Now these penalties that have been put down by the PNG NRL are only for that game or that competition. In the next couple of days the PNG Rugby League who looks after rugby league at the national level will assess the penalties of PNG NRL and see whether as well those culprits and officials will be banned from any rugby league game in the country, not just that competition. We'll wait and see what they come up with.
VINNIE WYLIE: MInister, when we spoke initially after the incident at the semi-final, obviously that in itself was a violent incident and that has led to this ban for Stanley Akinu and obviously the suspensions for the players but obviously following that we had the tragic death of Joe Pidik which was I guess a result of the violence at the beginning. So what was already a very serious incident became very tragic as well and I guess that kind of widened the ramifications of everything?
JT: It did. It made it ten times more serious. When you have an innocent death of anybody from the spin-offs of the violence that was caused from that particular match, of course it has much bigger ramifications and a death of a young man who has got a wife and a young child, it's a big thing, and it's totally unnecessary and uncalled for. The police are now putting in a full investigation to find the culprits that actually killed this young man who died from his injuries. And it just puts a very sour and bitter taste and just destroys the whole good feeling of the game. We have to ensure that those found to be guilty of this particular crime, especially of the death of this young man, must get the full force of the law. We're talking death here, we're not talking about an injury. We're talking the life of a human being and that is just totally unacceptable, it's just a disgrace.
All parties have 14 days to appeal.
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