Sport: Table-topping Blackhawks impressed by PNG Hunters

10:53 am on 23 May 2015

The Townsville Blackhawks have made a fairy-tale start to their first season in the Queensland Cup rugby league competition.

The PNG Hunters kick off their 2015 campaign in March.

The PNG Hunters kick off their 2015 campaign in March. Photo: SP PNG Hunters

But head coach Kristian Woolf believes they had it easy compared with the PNG Hunters.

Player and staff recruitment, sponsorship, marketing and developing a culture are among some of the challenges faced when starting a team from scratch.

And Woolf believes that, by comparison, they've been lucky.

"We obviously had a big task getting ourselves together for this year and I can only imagine that the PNG Hunters had an even bigger task last year: being a different country and stepping into a completely new competition, and just how you were going to make that work with players from different parts of a country, would have been a massive task. I think guys like Brad Tassell and Shane Morris and particularly the head coach Michael Marum - I've met him a few times and he's a guy I hold in really high regard - they've done an exceptional job."

The top of the table Blackhawks host the Hunters this afternoon at Jack Manski Oval.