Rugby league is built on community and connections and there were so many examples of all that is good within the game during the recent Activate! Queensland Country Week round.
Overall, the round saw seven regional and remote venues host 14 Intrust Super Cup teams, translating to 525 players and staff travelling via car, three commercial flights, two charter flights and 15 buses to be part of the action.
Quilpie welcomed the Redcliffe Dolphins and Ipswich Jets with open arms, with Jets coach Keiron Lander returning to his home town for the match.
It cannot be underestimated what a difference games like these make to the communities that host them.
Quilpie, which has a population that just tops 700, was one of the lucky venues this year, with the Quilpie Council and the Quilpie Junior Rugby League taking the lead in organising a huge game day.
This game has been in the planning for nearly two years and started with the fields being levelled, re-turfed, new irrigation put in place as well as filters being required for the water source to keep the fields alive.
There were a lot of people who helped make this one of the best footy weekends in the town for a long time, but Sally Challenor, who is the secretary of the Quilpie Junior Magpies was a major part of everything that happened.
Challenor and her many volunteers can be proud of what they achieved, as can game development staff including Jarrod Bailey and Tim Thomas who stopped by schools in Charleville on their way through to Quilpie to conduct clinics with junior players.
On the Friday before the match, they also attended the Quilpie School Sports Day to time events and measure the long jump before participating in the relays and tunnel ball events with the kids.
Game day was just as busy, with the pair refereeing some games at the junior cluster day which was attended by players from Augathella, Cunnamulla, Charleville and Quilpie, with some travelling three hours each way for their day of footy.
As is customary for Country Week, there were a number of events held outside of game day and in Quilpie, this included a function at the local bowls club, and an open training session from the Intrust Super Cup teams.
The QRL match officials also got into the spirit of the round, helping out by refereeing the Under 10 games prior to the Cup being staged later in the day.
The day was a great success, with volunteers working hard all day, starting in the canteen at 5.30am preparing meals to make sure the players were fed for breakfast. Some of the volunteers in the canteen in the morning were seen later in the night still working, but now in the bar.
The Jets and the Dolphins then put on their show and what a great game it turned out to be.
The players were generous with their time prior to the game with the locals and junior players and then backed up after their match, with everyone enjoying each other’s company.
There were similar stories at all of the host venues, from Chinchilla where the community raised funds for Drought Angels and to Richmond, where a new generation of Lillymans were getting their opportunity to play.
In Richmond, the visiting Townsville Blackhawks raffled their special jerseys and helped raise more than $4000 for the junior club, while in Dysart, the Mackay Cutters and Norths Devils were popular visitors to the home of the Bulls.
Across the highly successful round, more than 5000 people attended all the games and the players and staff took part in hundreds of community engagement events ranging from clinics, school visits, referee and coaching updates, female participation initiatives and game day.
To people who live in Queensland’s smaller communities, but have a big love of rugby league, the full benefits of these sorts of events can be hard to measure.
The smiles on the faces of the junior players, volunteers, parents and fans are matched by the visiting players when they realise days like this can make a big difference to so many lives and they have helped to make a lifetime of memories.
