Lae FC was a short-lived semi-professional
soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...
club founded in 2013 and dissolved in 2014, based in
Lae,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
.
The club took part in only one edition of the
Papua New Guinea National Soccer League, in
2014
The year 2014 was marked by the surge of the Western African Ebola epidemic, West African Ebola epidemic, which began in 2013, becoming the List of Ebola outbreaks, most widespread outbreak of the Ebola, Ebola virus in human history, resul ...
, where they finished the regular season in third place before reaching the Grand Final.
Against
Hekari United, they trailed 0–3 before crowd trouble caused the game to be abandoned after 70 minutes.
The club were eventually awarded the runner-up position, as their regular season record was inferior to that of their opponents.
History
In October 2013, it was announced that a new side would be participating in the
2014 Papua New Guinea National Soccer League under the name of Lae FC. The side announced their head coach, Peter Gunemba, in December.
The 2014 season was an excellent debut for the club in general, with the side recovering from a 4–0 opening day defeat to local rivals
Morobe FC to eventually finish third in the regular season table behind
Hekari United and
Oro FC.
The side came up against Oro in the semi-final, and in a closely fought clash, Lae came out on top in a 3–2 thriller, and went on to face Hekari in the final. However, with Lae trailing 0–3 to the champions, crowd violence broke out, with stones being thrown at the Hekari goalkeeper, and the match was abandoned with 20 minutes remaining.
Hekari were later awarded the championship.
Ahead of the
2015 season, the club were expected to pay a fine for 'bringing the game into disrepute', although it's unclear whether this fine was ever paid.
[{{Cite web, url=https://www.thenational.com.pg/bidding-time-ends-for-franchises-in-nsl/, title=Bidding time ends for franchises in NSL, date=2014-07-30, website=The National, language=en-US, access-date=2019-01-12] The club was dissolved shortly afterwards, with the manager and several players involved in the creation of a new franchise,
Lae City Dwellers, before the new season kicked off.
Honours
National Competitions
*
Papua New Guinea National Soccer League
**
2014
The year 2014 was marked by the surge of the Western African Ebola epidemic, West African Ebola epidemic, which began in 2013, becoming the List of Ebola outbreaks, most widespread outbreak of the Ebola, Ebola virus in human history, resul ...
: Runners-Up
References
Soccer clubs in Papua New Guinea