The Mareeba Gladiators have continued their tradition of adding a float to the far North Queensland town's annual rodeo parade, promoting the game and giving young kids a good time last Friday.
This year, the NRL got behind the float and Mareeba JRL president Darrin Hastie was pleased to see some some Queensland jerseys awarded to the stars of the future.
"They lend us a couple of Queensland jerseys, they give us a whole heap of Queensland posters (to distribute)," Hastie said.
"This is the first year (we have gotten) the NRL involved, and after seeing how well it went, we're going to look at doing it next year."
The rodeo is a long-standing tradition in the town west of Cairns, and the Gladiators' float has been a part of it for long time.
"The Mareeba Rodeo has been going here for about 60 years, they've always had a procession there, they have the rodeo queens," Hastie said.
"We enter ours every year, as a sporting theme and a bit of a fun theme, it's just to get all the young kids from Under 6 to Under 12s on the back of the float and cruise around and show footy off to the public of Mareeba."
Hastie said he had fond memories of the event.
"When I was a junior about 35 years ago we did it then, so it's a bit of a tradition that we continue, it's good the kids love it and they get to be seen by all the public.
"We have the older age groups walking in front of the float ... we also get a cane toad head and we get someone dressed up in the New South Wales gear.
"We're the Gladiators so we get a little four-wheeler done up with horses and we tow a chariot behind it with one of the A Grade players dressed up as a gladiator."
