Hard to envision a more exotic place, really. Papua New Guinea is the eastern half of that big island north of Australia. The independent country, as opposed to the western half of the island, which is part of Indonesia.

What images do you conjure when you hear “Papua New Guinea?”

Tropical rainforests. Towering mountains. Exotic birds. Headhunters, perhaps. The occasional Stone Age tribe being discovered in some remote valley.

And, of course, soccer.

Soccer?

The Fifa Club World Cup will be held here in Abu Dhabi beginning next week. It involves seven club teams — the six continental champions and a host-country team.

In the Fifa universe, “Oceania” is a continent. Or a confederation, anyway. It included Australia for quite some time, but then the Aussies jumped to Asia, reducing Oceania to New Zealand and a batch of tiny little rugby-loving countries/islands scattered across the South Pacific. (Hello, Tahiti!)

This year, the champion from that widely spaced crew is … Hekari United of Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea.

I wrote about the Hekari team as Part 1 of The National’s seven-part series on the clubs coming to the UAE for the Club World Cup.

Fascinating group.

Papua New Guinea is ranked in a five-way tie for last in the world in the Fifa rankings.

Hekari United is technically an amateur side because not all of their guys live on what the club pays them.

“Hekari” comes from the name of the clan the owner’s family belongs to.

Basically the entire team has never seen a desert.

The team’s top scorer,  Kema Jack, was a professional fisherman before he found out he could get paid, at least a little, to play soccer. For six years, he took a two-hour bus ride from his village to Port Moresby to play with the club … then took a two-hour ride back after the match. Finally, this year, he lives in the city.

The country’s biggest stadium seats 15,000 people. To make the club better, it went out to those known soccer hotbeds — Fiji and the Solomon Islands — to sign up more guys. Including a Fiji cop who is their goalkeeper.

The owner’s wife is the team manager.

The country’s official language is English, but the players mostly speak pidgin English.

These guys are just a lot of fun. The ultimate underdogs. And we all would be pulling for them. Except that their first game is against the hometown team, Al Wahda.

Hekari arrives on December 5. Hope they get a chance to look around and enjoy themselves, because we expect them to be leaving after they lost to Al Wahda on December 8.