Preston filming the 2010 promo

[amaline]

Preston filming the 2010 promo
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/s...003409,00.html

IN the red dust of far western NSW, a fantasy parallel universe arrived for a bunch of Aboriginal rugby league juniors this week: starring in a major national TV ad campaign, getting a day's holiday, playing footy with one of their heroes, and being plied with lollies between takes.

The 22 children, along with star indigenous player Preston Campbell, gathered at sunset on the Mundy Mundy Plains near Broken Hill - Mad Max country - to shoot rugby league's major 2010 television ad campaign.

It marks the latest step in league's deliberate engagement with indigenous Australians, who comprise up to 85 per cent of league memberships in the bush.

The "Belonging'' ads, which also promote the 2010 Indigenous Allstars season-opening match, were partly inspired by a story in The Sunday Telegraph about the town of Wilcannia and the extraordinary revival of its league team, the Boomerangs.

Our story about the positive role of league in Wilcannia's battle for social and economic change, published in September, coincided with NRL plans to shift its advertising focus towards indigenous themes.

Ad agency MJW Hakuhodo asked primary schools in Wilcannia, Menindee and Broken Hill to nominate children for the ads, to screen from December.

The February 13 Allstars game, on the Gold Coast on the second anniversary of Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations, will pit an indigenous side against a general NRL team, encompassing non-indigenous players from at least five other ethnic backgrounds.

The NRL will return the match proceeds to grassroots and indigenous programs. Campbell has set the pace, personally funding a youth drop-in centre in his northern NSW home town of Tingha.

[DIEHARD]

It sounds fantastic. I am really excited to see this new concept and how they will market it. I have really enjoyed the logo and colours and jersey they came up for the Indigenous All-Stars. And the ads they are running are awesome.

It really is a celebration of not just the Indigenous aussie culture, but of that of the rest of the NRL. Everyone can get a chance to represent. And players who would not ever get a chance to play with each other can do so, on the NRL All-Stars side of things.

They should also let Presto do the 2010 NRL ad, because words can't describe how much of a champion he is.