After being appointed as the PNG Chiefs' general manager in February, Michael Chammas has wasted no time in trying to build the club from the ground up.
Many people have expressed doubt over the Chiefs, questioning whether a team in Papua New Guinea can fundamentally work and have enough support to survive.
But for Chammas, he has no doubt in his mind the expansion side will be a success, believing the nation will truly get behind the team, resulting in an atmosphere never seen before in the NRL.
This was clear to him after witnessing the 2025 Prime Minister's XIII game between PNG and Australia at a packed out Santos National Football Stadium in Port Moresby.
"It's insane (the atmosphere)," Chammas told SEN 1170 Afternoons.
"I tell the story about this year when I went over there. It was a PM's XIII game and I was in the corporate box with some of the NRL guys and some of the Chiefs guys at the time.
"I turned around for a moment and… there was this roar, right? It's like a team had just won the grand final.
"I turned around and I said, ‘what the hell was that'? And they said, 'Cooper Bai just took a hit-up'."
With Papua New Guinea the only country in the world where rugby league is the national sport, Chammas knows the crowd will deliver an atmosphere that mirrors that of the most passionate football fans in the world.
"It'll be like nothing else in the NRL, that parochialism, it will be like a South American football crowd… and that's what excites me because as a kid growing up, that's what you're part of," the general manager claimed.
"I remember sitting on the hill at Kogarah, and you're throwing those newspaper things that you've ripped up all week and you're excited about it and you get behind it… that's the sort of fanaticism that we're going to have with PNG and it'll do wonders for rugby league."
The Chiefs' home ground will be the Santos National Football Stadium in Port Moresby, which can hold approximately 15,000 fans.
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