Support continues for North Queensland junior prospects

After being rocked by tragedy 18 years ago, a Northern Region junior league continues to raise funds for the Nick May Foundation, providing opportunities for young players to advance their footy careers.

In 2002, the Herberton junior and his friend Sonny Koci were killed in a horrific car accident, devastating the small Tableland community and greater Eacham rugby league fraternity.

With the teen destined for higher rugby league honours, Eacham junior rugby league president Barry Dikes said the foundation came about to help prospective footballers like Nick.

"It's an initiative that his parents founded, being a young fella from a regional town such as Herberton," Dikes said.

"He was a very promising young footballer when tragedy struck.

"After he passed away, they [Nick's parents] wanted to form the foundation to give kids a helping hand with reaching their full potential with their rugby league career."

The initiative was particularly important in its early years with very little public funding available to support junior players travelling away for representative sport.

"When it was first formed, there were very little benefits from the government that can now be applied for," Dikes said.

"It used to be that if you couldn't afford it, you simply didn't go."

To potentially receive funding from the foundation, the application process is quite unique with young players needing to pen a letter outlining their situation and future goals.

"They've always had a policy that if you needed assistance, you'd need to hand write a letter to Sally May, and then she would respond to each and every one in accordance," the Eacham junior rugby league chair said.

"It's not just a generic thing like... 'oh, I need a 100 bucks to go to Townsville'... you need to put your situation down and Sally has a really hands on duty in passing that money through."

In order to continue offering support to junior prospects, the region have actively held fundraisers, most recently raffling off a signed Queensland Maroons jersey.

"At the beginning of the year, Herberton usually dedicate one home game of gate takings for the Nick May Foundation," Dikes said.

"But because it has been a hard year this year with people not knowing if we were going to play or not, we came up with the idea of raffling a State of Origin jersey to raise funds.

"At the two gala days with the raffles, we raised $480.

"It's definitely something we'd love to do again next year as I think we would've been able to raise some more money if we didn't have that COVID break.

"The plan was to have a raffle at each of the four teams in our competition, but it just didn't get to happen this year with trying to juggle COVID and getting back on the field."

Along with the Foundation, Nick continues to be honoured with an annual day involving all four Eacham clubs playing off for the Nick May Memorial Shield.