The Sir Ignatius Kilage Sports Stadium is an

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

stadium located in

Lae Lae () is the capital of Morobe Province and is the second-largest city in Papua New Guinea. It is located near the delta of the Markham River and at the start of the Highlands Highway, which is the main land transport corridor between the Highl ...

, Papua New Guinea. It was named after Sir

Ignatius Kilage Sir Ignatius Kilage (12 July 1941 – 31 December 1989) was a Papua New Guinean politician who served as the fourth governor-general of Papua New Guinea from March to December 1989, when he died suddenly in office. Prior to the vice regal ...

who was the fourth

Governor General Governor-general (plural ''governors-general''), or governor general (plural ''governors general''), is the title of an office-holder. In the context of governors-general and former British colonies, governors-general are appointed as viceroy t ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

. The stadium, which is part of the larger Sir Ignatius Kilage Sports Complex, features 500 grandstand seats plus an additional 1,000 bench seats. It is the home stadium of the

Papua New Guinea National Soccer League The KPHL National Soccer League, also known as the Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited National Soccer League for sponsorship reasons, is the men's top division of professional soccer in Papua New Guinea. It is a nationwide league formed in 2006 by ...

Southern Conference.

History

The stadium was first built in 1990 for the 1991 South Pacific Games. In 2016, the stadium underwent an extensive restoration in preparation for the 2016 Papua New Guinea games.

Notable events

The stadium has hosted matches of the

Papua New Guinea national football team The Papua New Guinea national football team is the national team of Papua New Guinea and is controlled by the Papua New Guinea Football Association. Its nickname is the ''Kapuls'', which is Tok Pisin for Cuscus. Papua New Guinea's highest ...

, including a

2018 FIFA World Cup qualification The 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification process was a series of tournaments organised by the six FIFA confederations to decide 31 of the 32 teams which would play in the 2018 FIFA World Cup, with Russia qualifying automatically as hosts. All 210 ...

fixture against the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capita ...

in June 2017. It was originally announced that the stadium would undergo renovations and be a venue for the

2016 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup The 2016 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup was the 8th edition of the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, the biennial international women's youth football championship contested by the under-20 national teams of the member associations of FIFA. The tourname ...

. However, it was not one of the final venues chosen for the tournament. In 2003 and 2005 the

Oceania Area Championships in Athletics The Oceania Athletics Championships is an athletics event organized by the Oceania Athletics Association (OAA) for the World Athletics (WA) (formerly the IAAF) member associations of the Oceania region. First held in 1990 in Suva, it was initial ...

were held at the stadium.

References

External links

Soccerway profile
Sports venues in Papua New Guinea Lae 1990 establishments in Papua New Guinea Sports venues completed in 1990 {{PapuaNewGuinea-sports-venue-stub