A recent initiative in the ongoing battle to win the hearts and minds of talented Indigenous teenagers is allowing fresh opportunities for regional and rural Queenslanders to make rugby union their number one choice against rival footy codes.
The second year of the program commenced in Townsville, the heartland of the North Queensland Cowboys, and Cairns, which has a thriving AFL following, this week.
Queensland Rugby Union Indigenous Strategies Manager, Dylan Blackman, is visiting the two Far North cities along with Rugby Australia First Nations manager, Matt Sonter, to find the next Wallace Charlie, the most promising First Nations prospect to burst onto the scene since a teenage Kurtley Beale.
While the Australian rugby sevens lineup last year was targeting medals at the Paris Olympics, schoolboy Wallace Charlie impressed not only Blackman and Sonter, but also the game's chief powerbrokers and key national selectors.
Less than 12 months on, the Cairns prodigy has already started travelling the globe with the Australian sevens men's squad.
Blackman said the desire on the North Queensland itinerary is to unveil another Indigenous talent which could get lost a couple of thousand kilometres from the eyes in Brisbane.
"There is local club rugby and the country (non-Indigenous) pathway, but our kids are looking for more," he said.
"Rugby league is a lot more in the regions and AFL is booming in these regions as well.
"So, the kids are looking for more and we are going to be a presence to give them more to show them we're in the market for the next Wallace Charlie."
Blackman only needed to point to the invested Torres Strait Islander regarding what to do during trials held in Cairns on Tuesday and Townsville on Friday.
It showed the new-age reality for every elusive First Nations footballer: it's possible to crack the world stage from nearly nowhere.
"He is a young Cairns boy, who got an opportunity under a boarding school and has obviously stayed in the game and his first year out of school, he has debuted on the World Sevens Series," Blackman said.
"Obviously the talent is up there, but we just need to be a real presence and get up there."
Charlie almost unimaginably ran out in Australian gold on May 4 during the Los Angeles SVNS leg of the series, all inside six months from finishing school exams.
The 18-year-old is no flash in the pan, having already earned a Western Force development contract.
Current Ipswich Grammar's Head of Rugby, Russell Todd, plucked Charlie from near obscurity and delivered him into a standout school program, supporting and guiding the teen into a top-age competition for St Peter Lutheran College.
The leaps and bounds of Charlie's progress had included being named the MVP in the Auckland Global Youth Sevens tournament last year.
"Being an Indigenous boy from up north, it is very hard to go to a boarding school, but he stuck at it, and he's worked very hard," Blackman said.
The sharp 90 minute trial sessions for boys and girls are not planned to be structured, but more an opportunity to show off all the skills in the book.
"We want to see speed, agility, ball skills, footwork, but we also want to see natural talent, most of all," Blackman said.
"We want to see something raw that is just seeing the game in front of them without even telling them (instructions).
"It' is about them trying to find that space and that's what you want to see: kids playing natural footy, and that's when you find the kids that can play the game."
Blackman, in his second year since joining the Reds organisation, said the inclusive strategy had come off the back of the Lloyd McDermott Development Team's Indigenous philosophy.
Selected as Australia's second-ever Aboriginal Test player in 1962, McDermott promoted opportunities for Indigenous youth to create a sports foundation in his name which morphed into the development of an academy-like rugby team of raw players which through circumstances were starved of exposure to the top-level of the game.
The Indigenous rugby team's objectives are based on the late McDermott's leadership towards creating widespread education and potential opportunities for emerging First Nations figures to make positive lifestyle decisions.
"Lloyd McDermott teams always gave our kids another opportunity, and also have been pretty successful," Blackman said.
"But we also want to build all that back up to what it once used to be because I feel like I want our kids to be playing at the Olympics or in sevens (rugby), or even in a World Cup.
"That's probably the drive at the moment, to see our kids playing at that level, and that is boys and girls.
"We just want to be more of a presence because we know that rugby league has certainly taken over of all our talent and the AFL has always been there as well.
"We've got to be in front of them."
Blackman has readily accepted rugby union has surrendered far too much ground to win over Indigenous players against its football code opponents.
Before Queensland Rugby delivers in the northern part of the state, Blackman said it must also expand the knowledge of the game to gauge the interest where any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teenagers want to take their game.
"I wanted to get more Indigenous kids coming through our pathways," he said.
"Last year we started doing the little combines throughout some of these different regions (in the state), just to try and see what scope of kids are interested in the game."
The signs are exponentially good, according to data from Queensland Rugby.
At the 2024 Queensland Country Championships, more than 10 per cent of the 1000 plus participants identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.
The trials are paying dividends too, with GPS and other boys' private schools contacting Blackman about the potential of students turning up for the trials.
"We've got schools reaching out, saying can we come, support and help out because they want more Indigenous kids going to their schools," Blackman said.
"These are big private boys' schools who are heavily into rugby union that want to tap into talent Far North Queensland have."
