Andrew Orr takes over the running of the Ella Sevens tournament with a sense not only of pride, but also of connection.

The new president of the Lloyd McDermott Rugby Development Trust, which organises the annual premier Indigenous seven-a-side event on the first weekend of every March, is a product of the values of its Mununjali and Wakka Wakka founder.

The late Lloyd McDermott, who passed away in 2019, aged 79, was believed in 1962 to be the first Indigenous man to represent the Wallabies and the first Aboriginal barrister 29 years later established the trust in his name to identify First Nations talent and increase their participation in the code.

A decade later, Orr, who identifies as a Wemba Wemba man on his mother's side of the family, was left temporarily disenchanted with rugby union after the schoolboy talent felt snubbed for NSW Country at the 2001 national championships.

A chance meeting with Tom Evans, who Orr would ultimately succeed as Lloydies president, ensured his ongoing loyalty to its cause.

"I wasn't the starting hooker - a bit of politics got involved where I didn't get a real good crack at it, I thought, and not much game time," Orr told National Indigenous Times.

"Lloydies were competing in division two (NSW Country in division one) and that's where I met Tom, and asked him what do I have to do to get involved with Lloydies?"

The following year, Orr found himself an integral member of the Lloydies team and participated in the Ella Sevens after its formation in 2008. The tournament name pays tribute to dynamic Wallaby rugby brothers Mark, Gary and Glen Ella of the 1980s amateur era.

A key component of the trust - Orr found - was education, and soon after he was sent to Trinity Grammar School in inner Sydney as a boarder through a Lloyd McDermott-funded scholarship before completing a physiotherapy degree.

"I've always wanted to get back to Lloydies ever since playing in some role," Orr said.

Orr was a director of the Lloydies trust prior to assuming the presidency and its first Indigenous leader since Gary Ella in 2019.

The strong affinity of Indigenous communities with the Ella Sevens remain, Orr believed.

The Lloyd McDermott Development Rugby Team through the tournament has produced the majority of Indigenous Wallabies men and Wallaroos women for the country's national union sides and also players for the Australian Olympic sevens programs.

Orr said the key objective, now more than ever before, is attracting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to the code in what is a challenging time.

"It is a good community event for both men and women, but for us it is really important to have the under-17 and under-15 competitions that ties in well for our objectives," he said.

"We have just gone through some First Nations talent identification days around New South Wales with Rugby Australia through Matt Sonter, our First Nations Rugby manager."

The Ella Sevens plays a major role to assist the development for the under-18 and under-16 girls at the Australian Schools rugby sevens championships across Inner Sydney, Western Sydney, the South Coast and the North Coast of the state.

"From a Lloydies' perspective, it is always about developing the next generation to showcase what they have got and if you look at a lot of the men's teams particularly that there is a lot of ex-Lloydies players in all different teams still hanging around and giving back," Orr noted.

But Orr did concede the financial pinch of a cost-of-living crisis has influenced playing numbers at the Ella Sevens this year, adding that the competition was down by eight teams.

The union-based sevens tournament on the Central Coast also had to contend with attracting Indigenous players against a rugby league knockout at Wellington over the same weekend, a rugby nines tournament in Dubbo a weekend earlier, and another nines competition in late February at Cessnock.

"Some teams have to pick their priorities, I guess, because financially it's a bit of a hard thing at the moment," he said.

Orr said the Ella Sevens tournament attempts to keep the cost to a minimum.

The Ella Sevens Facebook page says it costs $1700 to field a senior team and $600 for a junior team, but the reward could be a prize of up to $10,000 each for the cup tournament winners.

"I thought it was still a great success - playing numbers might have been down a bit but overall, we still had 44 teams, including a mixture of men's, women's, the 17-year-old boys and girls and the 15-year-old boys," Orr said.

"So overall numbers remained strong.

"The men's still had 16 of those teams playing, which makes a pretty good format of four pools of four (teams) and the women had 10 teams where there was some good competition. And we had a winner that had never won it before."

Hulk United won the men's cup against Skindogs - the perennial yardstick of the Ella Sevens - 22-21 in a thrilling final.

Sydney Dreaming captured the women's cup 31-21 over Tiddas United.

LAPA claimed the men's plate 36-12 against Mother Country while Southern Kings 1 snared the bowl 34-0 over Sydney Dreaming.

Skindogs walked off with a 17-0 win over Central Coast Black Cockatoos for the women's bowl.

Boomerang Sports Club took out the under-17s boys cup over LAPA 32-24 while USYD Yellow held off Central Coast Cockatoos 24-19 in the boys bowl.

USYD Red captured the under-17 girls cup against Central West Mayilan 27-14.

Mindaribba hung on to win the under-15 boys cup 17-14 over Nyngan.