Prime Minister James Marape met with executives of the Wellington Phoenix Football Corporation during his recent trip to New Zealand to discuss pathway development for young Papua New Guineans through a football academy training program there. Prime Minister Marape met with General Manager David Dome of Wellington Phoenix Football Corporation, who is keen to work with Oceania Football Confederation nations, including Papua New Guinea, to help football development in the country. Mr. Dome informed Prime Minister Marape and his visiting delegation that the academy will benefit PNG in terms of developing upcoming Papua New Guinean players. “There are three ways of how we will conduct this academy program. Firstly, we will go to PNG, and by using your contacts, we’ll select the best players and bring them to Wellington. We will then put them in school and train them. These young Papua New Guineans will come out with English based education and provide a proper training program, " he said. He added that a second option is to bring players or teams from PNG, a week at a time, to play while they train under the academy. “Our final option is to go to PNG and set up a satellite academy and train your coaches to be at our academy level to develop your players in PNG,” he said. Impressed with Mr. Dome’s presentation, Prime Minister Marape said whilst the country is predominantly known for rugby league, football (soccer) footprint is almost 70 percent. “We have a semi-pro competition in PNG, which is doing well but not well enough, so it would be nice to have, at the ground level, the academy. I’m sure that thousands of kids will be funneled through this program for development. Your assistance is welcome,” the Prime Minister said. Also sharing the same sentiment with Prime Minister Marape was Minister for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology and Sports, Kinoka Feo. Minister Feo who expressed great interest in the program, highlighting that PNG lacked such a program and he was looking forward to working with the facilitators.