The Pacific Cup was a

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...

football competition, inaugurated in 1974, as a development competition for national teams from the Pacific region outside of Australia and New Zealand. The tournament ceased in 2009. In 2019, a similar competition called the "Oceania Cup" was founded. This time it featured Australia and New Zealand, in addition to many of the Pacific Cup nations, who had since established themselves in the sport. The competition has a single edition due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was re-founded in 2023 as the Rugby League Pacific Championship.

History

The Pacific Cup was started in 1975 by Keith Gittoes of the New South Wales Rugby League.International Competitions
''The Vault'' It was held twice in the 1970s before being abandoned due to cost. The competition was revived in 1986 by Peter Donnelly. This was a true Pacific Cup with Polynesian players playing for their true country of origin rather than for the NZ Maoris as had previously been the case . The competition was held biennially until the 1996 competition was postponed. Instead a 1996 Pacific Challenge was held. The

Super League Super League (also known as the Betfred Super League for sponsorship reasons, and legally Super League Europe Ltd.) is a professional rugby league competition, and the highest level of the British rugby league system, which consists of twelve t ...

ran an Oceania Cup in 1997. The Pacific Cup was revived by the New Zealand Rugby League once again in 2004, this time as a secondary competition to the Pacific Rim Championship. It was again held in February and March 2006 under NZRL administration, this time as a main competition. In the post- 2008 Rugby League World Cup shake up of the international calendar by the RLIF, it was confirmed that a Pacific Cup was to be held in 2009 with the winner of the tournament entering the 2010 Four Nations tournament. The 2009 tournament was hosted by Papua New Guinea. The competing teams were Cook Islands,

Fiji Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about ...

, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga.

Appearances

Eighteen teams from ten nations have taken part in the 12 Pacific Cup tournaments held to date: * – 11 appearances * – 10 appearances * – 9 appearances * – 7 appearances * – 7 appearances * – 6 appearances * – 5 appearances ( 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 2006) * – 5 appearances ( 1986, 1990, 1992, 1994,

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and Its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 60 ...

) * – 3 appearances ( 1988, 1992, 1994) * Australian Aborigines – 3 appearances ( 1990, 1992, 1994) * New Zealand Residents – 2 appearances ( 1996, 1997) * – 2 appearances ( 1975, 1977) * – 2 appearances ( 1975, 1977) * – 1 appearance ( 1994) * Rotuma – 1 appearance ( 1994) * – 1 appearance ( 1992) * Friendly Islands – 1 appearance ( 1990) * – 1 appearance ( 1977)

Finals

Results

References

External links