Papua New Guinea routs Lebanon to open Rugby League World Cup campaign

Papua New Guinea opened the 2026 Rugby League World Cup with a 42-18 win over Lebanon on Saturday at Santos National Football Stadium in Port Moresby, a seven-try performance that doubled as a milestone outing for Kumuls captain Rhyse Martin in what he has said will be his last international tournament.

The match, the third fixture of the tournament's opening round, was played in front of a home crowd eager to see Papua New Guinea defend its unbeaten record in group-stage matches on its own soil. The Kumuls led by six points at the break and pulled away in the second half, scoring three further tries to put the result beyond doubt against a Lebanon side making its first appearance of the event. It was the first men's World Cup match staged in Papua New Guinea since 2017, part of a 10-nation tournament being jointly hosted by Australia and Papua New Guinea that opened earlier in the week with Australia's win over New Zealand in Sydney.

A lopsided scoreline built on seven tries

Papua New Guinea crossed seven times, with five-eighth Gairo Voro opening the scoring in the seventh minute and winger Robert Derby, forward Nixon Putt, halfback Finley Glare and Epel Kapinias adding further tries before halftime and shortly after, according to the official box score published by the tournament's official fixture page. Martin, playing in the second row, scored the Kumuls' sixth try in the 71st minute and converted all seven of his side's tries, finishing with a match-high 18 points. Bailey Biondi-Odo added a late seventh try in the 74th minute.

Lebanon, coached by former Wallabies and Waratahs head coach Michael Cheika, kept the margin respectable in the first half through two tries from winger Abbas Miski and one from forward Tony Sukkar, with halfback Alex Conti converting all three. The Cedars trailed only 18-12 at the break before Papua New Guinea's defense tightened, a turnaround reflected in the match statistics compiled after full time, which credited the Kumuls with nine line breaks to Lebanon's three and more than 400 more running metres across the 80 minutes. An independent record of the match kept by the Rugby League Project's match archive confirms the same final score and halftime tally.

A farewell campaign begins at home

The win carried particular weight for Martin, a 33-year-old who has spent the back half of 2026 with English Super League club Hull KR and is PNG's most capped and highest-scoring international. Martin announced earlier this year that he intends to retire from representing his country once the World Cup concludes, a decision he tied directly to the tournament he helped open on Saturday. He is set to move into a football operations role with the PNG Chiefs once his playing career winds down.

"It feels like the right time to hang up my boots representing my country at the end of the year," Rhyse Martin said in announcing his decision, as Hull KR's official site reported.

PNG coach Jason Demetriou had already pledged over the Northern Hemisphere off-season to build the Kumuls' World Cup campaign around giving Martin the send-off he has earned, a commitment reported by the NRL's news service in late August. Saturday's win came despite PNG naming a squad missing several first-choice players unavailable for club or form reasons, a selection squeeze covered in detail by pre-tournament reporting on the Kumuls' depth chart.

The venue itself carries history for the program. Papua New Guinea has reached the World Cup quarter-finals three times, in 2000, 2017 and the pandemic-delayed 2021 tournament played in 2022, each time without advancing past the last eight. The 2017 campaign included a run of pool-stage victories at the same Port Moresby ground, then known as PNG Football Stadium, before a quarter-final exit to eventual runners-up England in Melbourne. Saturday's match was PNG's first World Cup pool fixture at home since that tournament, and organizers are counting on home support in Port Moresby to carry through the Kumuls' remaining group games this month.

A setback for Lebanon's rebuilding program

For Lebanon, the loss opens the tournament on the back foot in a pool phase that will determine knockout qualification. The Cedars, who have not played a Test since a 48-4 quarter-final defeat to Australia at the end of the 2022 World Cup, are competing under Cheika for a second straight tournament after that run ended in the last eight. Cheika, the son of Lebanese migrants to Australia who previously coached the Wallabies and the Waratahs in rugby union, agreed to lead Lebanon into this tournament before a planned return to Super Rugby, a dual commitment detailed by reporting on his appointment. Saturday's starting lineup featured fullback Jacob Kiraz and halfback Alex Conti running the attack, with Miski's double underlining the winger's status as one of the squad's most dangerous finishers heading into the rest of the tournament.

The 2026 World Cup groups Papua New Guinea and Lebanon in a combined pool with Tonga and France, a format in which only the top two nations from the four-team pool advance alongside the top two from the Australia-headlined pool containing New Zealand, Fiji and the Cook Islands, according to tournament structure reporting from rugby league coverage of the finalized World Cup line-up. A heavy loss in the opener leaves Lebanon needing results against both Tonga and France to stay in contention for the knockout rounds.

What comes next

Papua New Guinea will stay at Santos National Football Stadium to host Samoa on October 24 before traveling to Wollongong, Australia, to face England on October 30 in its final pool match. Lebanon returns to Sydney's CommBank Stadium for back-to-back fixtures, against Tonga on October 23 and France on November 1, needing victories in both to keep its World Cup alive.

For Martin, the remaining pool matches and any knockout football that follows will mark the close of an international career that began well before this tournament and that PNG's coaching staff has made a public point of honoring. Saturday's performance, in which he both scored and controlled the kicking tee in a rout, offered an early marker of how the Kumuls hope the rest of his farewell campaign unfolds. Papua New Guinea has never advanced past a World Cup quarter-final; a run deeper than that this year, built in part on two home wins in Port Moresby before the squad travels to Australia, is the stated aim of a coaching staff that has tied the campaign's emotional stakes directly to sending off its most decorated player on its own terms.