{"id":709503,"date":"2026-06-02T02:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T02:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/709503\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T02:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T02:46:09","slug":"chiefs-to-target-seven-broncos-with-a-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/709503\/","title":{"rendered":"Chiefs to target seven Broncos with a twist"},"content":{"rendered":"

The PNG Chiefs<\/a> have a handful of London Broncos<\/a> stars in their sights for their 2028 arrival into the NRL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although the message out of Port Moresby is that they want their potential signings to be playing either for a feeder NRL<\/a> club such as the Hunters or in the Super League<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NRL.com is revealing that if the Broncos continue to play in the Betfred Championship, England’s second division, they believe their path to the Chiefs could be obstructed.<\/p>\n

Following a two-week trip to England<\/a>, Chief’s head of football Michael Chammas met with the Broncos to discuss what the future looks like between the two networks.<\/p>\n

The Broncos have a strong PNG force behind them, with Jason Demetrio contributing to both Broncos and Kumuls head coaching duties, along with a crop of star players through their side.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been quite honest with the London Broncos<\/a> boys because we don’t believe the Championship is an ideal launching pad into an NRL<\/a> career,” Chammas said to NRL.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if they’re going to be in the NRL<\/a> system, we’d like them playing Super League<\/a> next year or coming back home to play in the Queensland Cup for the Hunters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been quite clear on that: we don’t think Championship is the right preparation for them to go into an NRL<\/a> pre-season so let’s see how the next few months pan out.<\/p>\n

\u201dWith the London Broncos<\/a>, we’d love to see them in the Super League<\/a>, we’d have no qualms about them staying here for another year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Broncos players that the Chiefs are keeping their sights on are Morea Morea<\/a>, Gairo Voro<\/a>, Robert Mathias<\/a> and Alex Max, Finley Glare<\/a>, Epel Kapinias<\/a> and Jeremiah Simbiken<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The crop of London stars are contracted with the club for 2027, but Chammas is keen for players looking for an opportunity at the Chiefs to be in either the Super League<\/a> or through the PNG Hunters system to give them the best opportunity to compete in a preseason with the NRL’s 19th expansion club.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chammas also highlighted recent speculation on his quest to building his inaugural roster, shooting down any talk of pursuing some big-name stars contracted in the Super League<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone keeps asking us about Edwin Ipape<\/a> – the reality is Edwin Ipape<\/a> signed a six-year deal to stay at Leigh,\u201d Chammas said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd as far as has been reported, there is no NRL<\/a> get-out for him, so we’ve got to respect his position there.<\/p>\n

\u201cLachlan Lam’s contracted for another year at Leigh as well. Just like the NRL<\/a> – we know the rules we’re playing by and if things pop up we’ll deal with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the moment there are some rules around certain players that limit what we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The PNG Chiefs<\/a> have secured two superstars in four-time premiership-winning half Jarome Luai<\/a> and the NRL’s greatest all-time try scorer Alex Johnston<\/a> as their first two signings.<\/p>\n

After visiting the nation last month, star utility Connor Watson<\/a> will also join the Chiefs in 2028, following reports surfacing last week by Code Sports that he has agreed to terms with the Melanesian-based club.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The PNG Chiefs have a handful of London Broncos stars in their sights for their 2028 arrival into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-709503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709503","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=709503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}