The Sportz Events Corporate Rugby League Nines tournament kick started on Saturday, 23rd September at the Sir John Guise Stadium in Port Moresby, uniting employees of corporate companies that have registered to play in the competition. Tournament Director Solomon Ravu stated that he started the Corporate Rugby League Nines competition in 2004, when he was Chairman of the Port Moresby Rugby Football League. He said that games used to be only on Friday nights but over the years they have changed their game nights to Saturday as it allowed everyone to participate and has been successfully running for 20 years now. “We started off with only 12 teams and for this year we now have a total of 24 companies in the competition that is played every Saturday night at the SJG." Ravu announced that there were 24 teams competing in the 2023 tournament which were put into 3 pools of 8 teams, which will see each team play a total of 7 games in the round robin before teams go into one weekend of play offs and another weekend of Preliminary Finals. “This weekend is round four, which means we have four more rounds to go before Preliminary finals, so teams are starting to really compete for the top 8 spots on the ladder.” He highlighted that the main goal of this tournament was to help companies promote their businesses and mainly for networking. “The games are a good opportunity to play, create company networking. The tournament serves as a good platform for them to promote their businesses while improving physical fitness for employees.” “Most of the players become serious about the game and end up going into Rugby League, so in a way this is a great pathway for people who enjoy rugby.” According to Mr. Ravu, the Central Provincial Government, Funeral Home, Bishop Brothers and NMSA are some of the strongest teams in the competition, while MiBank, National Volunteer Services and Central Provincial Government as well as Digicel PNG are some of the new teams in the competition. Meanwhile, he thanked the companies and teams in the tournament for taking part and further stated that the Sportz Events Southern Rugby League Nines Tournament, which is usually hosted during the second week of December, will this year be moved back to the 26th -30th of November due to unavailability of the National Football Stadium on the second week of December.