As the excitement builds for next month's Santos Festival of Rugby, Narrabri are getting ready to hit the training paddock.
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The Blue Boars men and women will kick-off pre-season on Tuesday night ahead of their clashes with Roma.
The games will add a bit of extra local flavour as the two-day rugby feast returns to Narrabri on February 10 and 11, promising even more for fans.
Expanded to two nights this year, the NSW and Queensland Country men and women will take centre stage on the Friday night before the Waratahs and Reds men and women do battle on the Saturday night.
Inbetween there will be 7s action featuring some of the best women's talent in the country, community coaching clinics, and even old boys games as well as performances from Brad Cox and Casey Barnes.
"It feels more like a festival for all," Narrabri president Mick Coffey said.
"There's sort of something for everyone - 15s, 10s, 7s; plenty of men's, and plenty of women's rugby as well."
Coffey said that was the intention when the concept was first thrown around - a festival that incorporated "different levels of rugby". But COVID hampered that the first two years.
Only a month away now, he said things are coming along well.
"The luxury we've had this time is time up our sleeve compared to the first time around where all we had was nine weeks to get a field up to scratch in a drought to play a game of footy," he said.
It's mainly just cosmetic and maintenance things they need to do like a bit of painting, fixing leaking taps, replacing some of the sponsors signs; none of the major work they had to do last time. They still had machinery there the night before.
They also don't have the stress of negotiating the COVID protocols, which were constantly changing.
"I think the Department of Health wanted to cancel three times in the 10 days leading up so we had a couple of nights there where we sat up all night rewriting COVID plans, that was a huge amount of stress," Coffey said.
He said the Blue Boars players are excited about being involved.
"I think it's one of those things that you can sort of tell your grandkids down the track, that I played in the same festival as the Reds and the Waratahs," he said.
"That's a pretty cool thing that not many people have been able to do."
Narrabri supporters could potentially too have a couple of players to cheer on in the Super W trial with Martha Harvey and Brooke McKinnon both training with the Waratahs pre-season squad.
"We're optimistic I guess that the NSW Waratahs might find a slot for those girls to play in a Waratahs jersey on Dangar Park," Coffey said.
"That'd be pretty exciting and what an inspiration for the younger girls in the club to see that happen."
More than 3,600 people flocked to Dangar Park for the inaugural festival in 2021. Then still under COVID capacity restrictions, many more are expected to attend this year.
Coffey said ticket sales are tracking better than anticipated at this stage, expecting the typical late rush, as is the way in the country. The clubhouse area is just about sold out, he said.
Tickets are available through Ticketek.
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