A tiny northern NSW First Nations rugby league club recovering from the devastating floods in 2022 is trying to raise money to play in one of Australia's biggest Indigenous sports events.

The Cabbage Tree Island Rugby League Club wants to send two men's and one women's team to the NSW Aboriginal Rugby League Koori Knockout 2024 in Bathurst this weekend but needs around $15,000 to get them there.

The Cabbos, as the club is affectionately known, didn't attend last year's knockout because the small community couldn't fundraise after two catastrophic floods wiped out towns in the NSW northern rivers region.

Cabbo football manager Des Anderson said the knockout meant everything to the club and community.

"The knockout for the club is like the pinnacle of our rugby league year and we've got some of the most passionate supporters going around and they travel with us everywhere," he told National Indigenous Times.

"We didn't have the funding last year so we couldn't go, so it's made it even more important for us this year to make sure that we have representation at the knockout again."

Mr Anderson said the club would normally hold several fundraising events yearly to raise money to send the teams to the knockout. But he said most of the local Indigenous community haven't been allowed back on the island, in the Richmond River, as the NSW government decided in late 2023 that homes would not be rebuilt due to the deemed high risk of future flooding.

The community was relocated to the nearby village of Wardell.

"At the moment people living in pods and we can't go back to the island just yet," Mr Anderson said.

"We don't have a local team anymore and a lot of our players that play up in the Northern Rivers come back and represent Cabbo.

"We get our playing gear and all that sort of stuff by doing raffles and smaller things but our accommodation is the biggest thing.

"I think our accommodation this year is in around the $37,000 mark."

While the club which was established in 1929 has never won the knockout, Mr Anderson is hoping Cabbo can go all the way this year.

"The closest we've ever come in 1978 when we made the final but it's a real big dream for a lot of people of Cabbo.

"I reckon if Cabbo did win it there'd be a lot of happy people."

Information on how to support Cabbo is available online.