Stronger Together in PNG – Intensive Advocacy Skills Workshop trainees displaying their true Blue support in club merchandise supplied by Melbourne's Carlton-supporting barristers, Port Moresby, November 2025.

It’s 50 years now since Australia’s administration of Papua New Guinea ended with PNG’s independence, but the two nations, just 150 kilometres apart, remain intertwined as strategic partners – and in Carlton can also be found a common thread.

Historically, football club’s PNG connection can be sourced to as far back as World War Two, when the region was both a critical and perilous theatre of war for Australian Forces. Premiership players Bob Green and Jim Park, both of whom represented the Blues with distinction in the 1938 Grand Final victory over Collingwood, served in PNG during wartime.

Leading Aircraftman Green made it back – but Lt Park tragically paid with his life in Wau whilst serving with the 2/6th Infantry Battalion.

More recently, Carlton’s 1995 Premiership defender Michael Sexton and his younger brother Ben were both PNG-born, their parents having both been employed in education on the island nation.

Today, a collective of Carlton-supporting barristers is espousing the Club’s cause in PNG and island nations through the Pacific, amongst them Robert O’Neill SC and Tim Walker KC. In Melbourne, O’Neill convenes the ‘Law Blues’ – a corps of like-minded legal industry figures (Walker amongst them) who regularly gather at Club-centric functions to which Carlton past players are invited as guest speakers.

Last month, O’Neill and Walker were part of an Advocacy Training Team of 14 volunteer barristers from the Victorian Bar, supported by the Australian Government in partnership with the Legal Training Institute, which delivered and Intensive Advocacy Skills Workshop to 82 students over five days at the LTI Campus in Port Moresby.

The workshop, the 26th of its type held, is essentially designed to assist PNG trainees (all law graduates required to complete a year’s practical training in order to be admitted to practice law) with techniques in courtroom advocacy. The workshop is supported by the High Commission in PNG – including the High Commissioner himself Ewen McDonald - who despite his Essendon allegiance graciously accepted a Carlton cap from International Advocacy Training Committee (IATC) Chair Peter O’Farrell KC at a presentation coinciding with the program’s Opening Ceremony.

Volunteer barristers like O’Neill and Walker provide Advocacy Training Workshops with the support of the Victorian Bar’s IATC. As with PNG, the IATC works with Pacific nations including the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu.

Along the way, the football club has supported the volunteer barristers with the provision of merchandise and tickets for overseas delegations and for when visitors from the Pacific jet into Melbourne.

In the process, an increasing presence of Carlton supporters in the Legal Profession throughout the Pacific has been created, in no small part due to the efforts of committed Blues devotees O’Neill, Walker and co.

A recent beneficiary of the Intensive Advocacy Skills Workshop was Jessy Biar, now part of the PNG legal practice Holingu Lawyers. Biar’s expertise covers dispute resolution, claims against the state, judicial review, insurance law, contracts and commercial litigation.

In 2024, Biar furthered his qualifications and skills at the Bar and Melbourne University – and fronted up with Walker’s three sons to watch his beloved Blues play in the process.

Image courtesy Shivani Pillai, Barrister, Victorian Bar.

‘My first Carlton game was with the Walker boys, the cliffhanger against St Kilda in the final round of 2024,” Biar recalled. “It was insanely exciting, we thought we’d won the game with a lot of injured players out and then it was lost in the last few seconds, with the winning goal kicked right in front of us.

“We were so deflated, but then the result of another game meant the Blues got to play finals, and we were pumped up again. It was welcome to the Blue rollercoaster.

“We couldn’t make it to finals in 2025, but for some reason I feel very optimistic about 2026. C’mon Bluebaggers, let’s ride that rollercoaster.”

Another to gain from the workshop was Moga Hane-Nou, a Legal Officer for the National Judicial Staff Service, who with a number of her compatriots also bore witness to a Carlton fixture in the 2025 season.

A group of lawyers from the Pacific region, in Melbourne for the Train the Trainer program involving courtroom advocacy training techniques for the 2025 Round 15 contest at the MCG. Images courtesy Shivani Pillai, Barrister, Victorian Bar.

“We learnt a thing or two about the game, soaked up the electric atmosphere at the MCG and experienced the fan's passion for AFL,” Hane-Nou said of the experience.

“We wish the team all the very best in the 2026 season and will be cheering them on from PNG. Carlton now has a following of PNG lawyers and families, and my nine year-old son is a new fan.  Go the Bluebaggers!”