By BRIAN LOWE
PAPUA New Guinea made it a clean sweep of their Pool games to qualify for the World Cup quarter-finals with a 64-0 shutout of the United States Sunday in Port Moresby.
Another sellout crowd at Oil Search National Football Stadium witnessed another dominating performance by the home team. PNG ran in 11 tries on the day, 10 of which were converted.
The Kumuls were just too good and had way too much fire power for an overmatched US side that simply had no answers.
Papua New Guinea right winger Justin Olam bagged a hat-trick, while five-eighth Lachlan Lam, son of one of PNG’s favourite sons Adrian, scored a brace on debut.
The men in red and black were full of running and made ground seemingly at will most of the day. With the ball in hand, they were virtually unstoppable and when defending, they hit hard and were stingy giving away very few yards.
There weren’t too many pundits, if any, who’d given the Hawks much chance before the game and certainly by halftime it was clear to see why.
PNG had raced to a 34-0 lead by the main intermission on the back of six tries, five of which were converted by goalkicker and backrower Rhyse Martin.
Despite a halftime pep talk by US coach Brian McDermott in which he told his players to lift their intensity and stick to the fundamentals of the game, not much changed in the second forty.
Papua New Guinea ran in five more tries, all of which Martin converted to round out their scoring.
The Americans were outgunned by a more professional team. They seemed almost pedestrian at times and lacked purpose when on attack.
There were some notable performances by some of the Hawks, namely the Howard brothers, Danny and Stephen, who tried hard in the engine room, as well as centre Junior Vaivai and wing Ryan Burroughs. The latter pulled a hamstring late in the piece while trying to run down a rampaging Kumul on his way to the try zone.
It was the second consecutive match in which the States were blanked following their inability to score against Italy the previous week. It was also their biggest loss of the tournament.
As the Hawks pack their bags and head for home, they will reflect on a World Cup campaign that saw them finish with a massive -156 points differential.
On the flipside, Papua New Guinea has come out of the Pool stages with a points diff of +116 and will be hoping to keep that momentum going as they move into the money rounds.
They are an offensively explosive team that on their day should be more than a handful for any opposition, including the big three, or big four if you want to elevate Tonga into that rarified air.
