RL rules the South Pacific! PNG has 8 million more fans

[Eddie]

56 minutes ago, Pulga said:

This is not some uncontacted tribe. These people have always been there, it's just that the statisticians grossly underestimated how many.

 

I wouldn’t call them statisticians, they must be hopeless.  I wonder if boosting their estimated population will bring about an increase in foreign aid. 

[Exiled Wiganer]

33 minutes ago, Eddie said:

I wouldn’t call them statisticians, they must be hopeless.  I wonder if boosting their estimated population will bring about an increase in foreign aid. 

Is this your specialist subject? The PNG PM isn’t discounting this as firmly as you…

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Eddie said:

If these 8m people weren’t even known to the PNG government until at some point over the last 10 years I doubt they’ll be Hunters fans. 

Rugby League is played all over PNG so I reckon most of them are fans or aware of the team. What is happening here is that children aren't being registered with the government and so go unaccounted.

[Eddie]

43 minutes ago, Exiled Wiganer said:

Is this your specialist subject? The PNG PM isn’t discounting this as firmly as you…

Not a specialist subject, I just have some common sense. 

[Tosh]

8 hours ago, Copa said:

If that’s the case the PNG Hunters probably has more fans than quite a few English Premier League clubs.

Just a shame that they haven’t got 2 pennies to rub together.

[Eddie]

8 hours ago, Copa said:

If that’s the case the PNG Hunters probably has more fans than quite a few English Premier League clubs.

It’s a rash to assume that so many people across a country as large, rural and poor as PNG support or even know about the PNG Hunters. 

[pahars]

2 hours ago, Eddie said:

I wouldn’t call them statisticians, they must be hopeless.  I wonder if boosting their estimated population will bring about an increase in foreign aid. 

TBF Eddie if there aren’t proper  records of births, marriages and deaths and the overwhelming majority are subsistence farmers who don’t pay tax then it’s very difficult to get an accurate picture. 

[Keith989]

1 hour ago, Eddie said:

It’s a rash to assume that so many people across a country as large, rural and poor as PNG support or even know about the PNG Hunters. 

I presume/hope these people are joking

[Pulga]

4 hours ago, Tosh said:

Just a shame that they haven’t got 2 pennies to rub together.

The crazy thing is they've just halved all GDP per capita too. So they're twice as poor as first thought.

[Copa]

4 hours ago, Eddie said:

It’s a rash to assume that so many people across a country as large, rural and poor as PNG support or even know about the PNG Hunters. 

Not really. The Hunters are the premier club in the national sport. RL is extremely popular in PNG and known all throughout the land. It’s hard to explain how fanatical they are.

[Eddie]

38 minutes ago, Copa said:

Not really. The Hunters are the premier club in the national sport. RL is extremely popular in PNG and known all throughout the land. It’s hard to explain how fanatical they are.

I’ve never been but I know PNG is the most rural country on earth and also one of the poorest. Is rugby really popular in inaccessible villages hundreds of miles from the nearest town etc? And would the people there follow the Hunters or even know about them if they don’t have access to TV or newspapers? 

[Copa]

7 minutes ago, Eddie said:

I’ve never been but I know PNG is the most rural country on earth and also one of the poorest. Is rugby really popular in inaccessible villages hundreds of miles from the nearest town etc? And would the people there follow the Hunters or even know about them if they don’t have access to TV or newspapers? 

My friends have been on long multi day jungle walks and arrived in villages where people wear old RL jerseys and a cleared piece of land will have rugby posts made of tree branches.

This 2016 article will give an insight.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/meet-the-png-footy-team-that-treks-the-kokoda-trail-in-thongs-and-bare-feet/news-story/1f088faff2cbd02e4a1081fad3674363

Not that this would stop them. This is the only country in the world that calls rugby league its national sport for a reason.

Four days walk either side from a television, the fine folk living along the Maguli range can tell you all about Johnathan Thurston’s grand final winning field goal.

The Ben Hunt dropped ball that preceded it, too.

News that fan favourite and compatriot James Segeyaro has been shuffled off to Leeds is met with disbelief, then assurances he’ll be back soon enough to win a title.

 

[Exiled Wiganer]

34 minutes ago, Eddie said:

I’ve never been but I know PNG is the most rural country on earth and also one of the poorest. Is rugby really popular in inaccessible villages hundreds of miles from the nearest town etc? And would the people there follow the Hunters or even know about them if they don’t have access to TV or newspapers? 

Why don’t you do some actual research of your own? 

[Eddie]

14 minutes ago, Exiled Wiganer said:

Why don’t you do some actual research of your own? 

As in go there, trek to the most remote parts and ask if they’re PNG Hunters fans? I’d love to but sadly I have a family and job. 

[dkw]

10 hours ago, Eddie said:

I’ve never been but I know PNG is the most rural country on earth and also one of the poorest. Is rugby really popular in inaccessible villages hundreds of miles from the nearest town etc? And would the people there follow the Hunters or even know about them if they don’t have access to TV or newspapers? 

So you've never been, you admit you don't know the situation or state in the country, have no clue as to how many support the game but feel ok to make definitive statements about the "statisticians being hopeless".

[Eddie]

1 hour ago, dkw said:

So you've never been, you admit you don't know the situation or state in the country, have no clue as to how many support the game but feel ok to make definitive statements about the "statisticians being hopeless".

Yes, by definition a statistician estimating an actual population of 17m at 8m is hopeless. 

[dkw]

2 hours ago, Eddie said:

Yes, by definition a statistician estimating an actual population of 17m at 8m is hopeless. 

How do you know if they estimated it? Did you check their working, did you check against other comparisons? Did you check what access to information they had? Or have you just jumped to a ridiculous conclusion...ironically based on no information.

Edited December 8, 2022 by dkw

[Eddie]

16 minutes ago, dkw said:

How do you know if they estimated it? Did you check their working, did you check against other comparisons? Did you check what access to information they had? Or have you just jumped to a ridiculous conclusion...ironically based on no information.

They must have estimated it, how else do you think they did it, the certainly didn’t count. 

[pahars]

5 minutes ago, Eddie said:

They must have estimated it, how else do you think they did it, the certainly didn’t count. 

They don’t count people in the UK. They go on to national databases that have births, marriages and deaths, electoral role, taxpayers, benefit claimants, pensioners, children in education etc etc and on top of that we have a census every few years. 

None of that bureaucracy exists in rural PNG and it’s not the type of place you turn up at a remote village and start asking questions. 
 

The figure may have been an accurate reflection of the data they actually had  rather then an estimate. 

[ELBOWSEYE]

15 hours ago, Eddie said:

I’ve never been but I know PNG is the most rural country on earth and also one of the poorest. Is rugby really popular in inaccessible villages hundreds of miles from the nearest town etc? And would the people there follow the Hunters or even know about them if they don’t have access to TV or newspapers? 

Read accounts of previous GB tours were people travelled days out of the jungle to see games and had to be controlled with teargas whilst in full tribal ware. 

[Eddie]

45 minutes ago, pahars said:

They don’t count people in the UK. They go on to national databases that have births, marriages and deaths, electoral role, taxpayers, benefit claimants, pensioners, children in education etc etc and on top of that we have a census every few years. 

None of that bureaucracy exists in rural PNG and it’s not the type of place you turn up at a remote village and start asking questions. 
 

The figure may have been an accurate reflection of the data they actually had  rather then an estimate. 

The data was woeful then. Not sure what point you’re trying to make, there is something fishy about a 21st century country, albeit an impoverished one, suddenly doubling their official population. 

[gingerjon]

30 minutes ago, Eddie said:

The data was woeful then. Not sure what point you’re trying to make, there is something fishy about a 21st century country, albeit an impoverished one, suddenly doubling their official population. 

It's all covered here: https://www.ft.com/content/5a1a8d10-d2cd-4467-b877-06146cdb48e1

It seems that there is strong scepticism about the 'doubling' number. And also, quite crucially, PNG didn't commission the report themselves so it's not them suddenly going, "Actually, there's twice as many of us so you better give us even more aid."

[pahars]

30 minutes ago, Eddie said:

The data was woeful then. Not sure what point you’re trying to make, there is something fishy about a 21st century country, albeit an impoverished one, suddenly doubling their official population. 

 Of course the data would be woeful for all the reasons I outlined in the post you replied to. The point was that rather then people being useless or making things up they doing the best they could with the available data.
 

It doesn’t matter what century you’re in if you don’t keep records of your population. The domesday book was nearly 1,000 years ago. 

[Eddie]

6 minutes ago, pahars said:

 Of course the data would be woeful for all the reasons I outlined in the post you replied to. The point was that rather then people being useless or making things up they doing the best they could with the available data.
 

It doesn’t matter what century you’re in if you don’t keep records of your population. The domesday book was nearly 1,000 years ago. 

Ok, I’m still not sure why you think an overnight doubling of population estimate isn’t strange, but we’ll have to agree to disagree. 

[pahars]

17 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Ok, I’m still not sure why you think an overnight doubling of population estimate isn’t strange, but we’ll have to agree to disagree. 

I’m merely pointing out that previous ones could easily have been massively undercounted for perfectly innocent reasons. We will probably never really know the true figure.