The PNG Rugby Union office has spoken out to clarify social media speculation that they had not done proper selections for the PNG women’s 10s team that had participated in the Hong Kong 10s tournament that was held on April 3rd-4th. In an interview with PNG HAUSBUNG, Chief Executive Officer of PNGRU Mr Sailosi Druma said it was a challenge doing selections as most of the unions had yet to commence their season this year and selected players from recent tournaments and a trial in the nation's capital. "One of the biggest challenges having that selection done was because all the unions hadn’t commenced their 2024 season, so we had to go to some tournaments that happened-like the Trans Highway 7s and we got four girls from Lae, two girls from Mt Hagen from the cassowaries squad last year." "For the NCD trials it was organized, sent out to both unions-from CRU we had girls from the Brothers RUC, Defence RUC, Nova RUC, who attended the trial with most of the girls from the NCDRU clubs." Druma stated that the selection had to be done to meet the timeline for the tournament. "So yes, it may seem like the selection didn’t involve everyone but there was enough notice to finalise this team to attend for the first time." "I know there were a lot of speculation stemming from where we had made the selections and selected this teams." Additionally, he said this was the second year that they had selected girls from outside of the Port Moresby that have in recent years dominated the national teams. "This is the first time we got girls from Hagen, girls from Lae and Port Moresby.” “In terms of the women’s selection, I believe it was fairly done but the challenge was because a lot of unions haven’t started their season." Druma also added that for the men they’ve been training for quite some time now. “The team is made up of boys from the CRU competition, Lae and NCDRU." Meanwhile he further stated that the teams were a part of a development program in the PNG Rugby's strategic plan to get the team to the play offs in 2027. "This is not the national team, its just our development program. We had to attend this tournament.” “When we met with Hong Kong rugby last year, we told them we wanted to attend their tournament." "This was made known in November last year to all the union presidents that we were going to attend this.” “This is a program to kick-start our strategic plan for get to the playoffs in 2027."