WHEN Papua New Guinea’s women’s rugby league team made their debut appearance in a trial match in the country’s capital Port Moresby in 2017, they were greeted with a barrage of missiles and insults.

In a country ranked one of the worst in the world for gender-based violence, in which over 60 per cent of women and girls have been subjected to physical or sexual abuse, the emergence of the team nicknamed the Orchids was evidently too much for many to bear.

“After the game they told us to walk around and thank the crowd, and they threw water containers at us and called us names you never want to hear,” the team’s current vice-captain, Gloria Kaupa, said.