Since then, the situation has worsened and all sport in Lebanon has been suspended, but with many people in the areas worst affected moving to safety, Hachache said plans were underway to resume training and playing.<\/p>\n
The LRLF has a 9s tournament scheduled for April and is maintaining a booking on the grounds in the belief that playing will provide a boost to morale.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere, in the rugby league community, everyone is united. The players and the teams that participated in those friendly games were from all over Lebanon – from the south, from the north, from different religions and different cultural backgrounds,\u201d Hachache said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe friendly 9s matches were in preparation for the proper tournament in April and I am still hoping that if the situation stabilises we can go ahead. The players are keen to play, they even wanted to keep training, so we are going to continue to plan and be ready if we can go ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cedars are in the World Cup in October and November but the conflict in the Middle East won\u2019t affect Lebanon\u2019s RLWC2026 campaign under Michael Cheika.<\/p>\n
The former Wallabies mentor, who is an assistant coach at Sydney Roosters, guided Lebanon to the quarter-finals of the last World Cup in England and will again take charge of the Cedars, whose draw includes matches against:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nPNG at Santos National Stadium, Port Moresby on October 17
\nTonga at CommBank Stadium, Sydney on October 23
\nFrance at CommBank Stadium, Sydney on November 1
<\/p>\n
With Lebanon still recovering from the impact of COVID-19, the 2020 Beirut Port explosion and the financial crisis that has gripped the country, Hachache and the LRLF are focused on rebuilding the domestic game.
\u00a0
As a result, a decision had already been made to rely on NRL stars, led by Jacob Kiraz, Adam Doueihi, Mitchell Moses and Alex Twal, who are among 15 players with Lebanese heritage in the Telstra Premiership.
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Others such as Wigan’s Abbas Miski play in the Super League, or NSW and Queensland Cup competitions.
\u00a0
\u201cAs it stands now, we won\u2019t be sending any players for the World Cup,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cThere are a lot of players and a lot of staff leaving the country and migrating so this year we decided it is not a good idea to send players who would just be spectators.
\u00a0
\u201cThey wouldn\u2019t be in the squad because they are not up to the standard of the team. We are putting in place a 10-to-15-year plan, where probably by the next World Cup cycle (in 2030) we will have three or four players from the local community, and more and more after that.\u201d
\u00a0
Hachache is the most capped Cedars player and has played in nearly every major international tournament or World Cup qualifying tournament involving Lebanon since 2006.
\u00a0
\u201cI have played for over 20 years, I have played with Josh Mansour, Adam Doueihi, Reece Robinson and Jacob Kiraz, and over the course of those years we played in three World Cup qualifying campaigns,\u201d he said.
\u00a0
\u201cI learned a lot from those players and the team that I was able to take back for the players in Lebanon, but at the moment the players we have in Lebanon have only been playing for a year or two so I don\u2019t see any benefit.
\u00a0
\u201cWe might send some officials to shadow the team staff and learn from them, or maybe some coaches who could benefit from being involved.
\u00a0
\u201cBut moving forward we are going to work our way up so that hopefully in the next World Cup cycle we will have local players in the World Cup squad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since then, the situation has worsened and all sport in Lebanon has been suspended, but with many people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-578630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}