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NSW True Blues including Andrew Johns, Brad Fittler, and Danny Buderus are paying a special visit to Armidale today to provide training to some of the most promising young Indigenous players in the state.

Among the past legends are current NRL stars Joel Thompson and Connor Watson, along with Latrell Mitchell, where Armidale for him is just a few hours north-west of his hometown Taree.

A squad containing 28 players aged 16-18 will gather at SportUNE, where the True Blues and the modern day stars will put them through positional-specific training drills, similar to what they did at the NSWRL under-16 and 18 Origin Pathways Program at Narrabeen earlier in the week.

They will also be taken through various off-field workshops, and Buderus values these types of camps because without them, some of the most talented Indigenous players in the state may go unnoticed and slip through the cracks.

“About six of us are going out there, we want to get the Indigenous guys on the mid-north coast involved,” Buderus says to NSWRL.com.au.

“There’s so much talent that can be exposed, you go out to any of those bush areas and you see so many of those guys playing that could be brought into our game and you just don’t like to see all that talent not getting used.

“It’s the same as when you go to Fiji and you see some of the Pacific Islander countries, the more those guys are playing the better the standard [becomes].”

Acknowledgement of Country

New South Wales Rugby League respects and honours the Traditional Custodians of the land and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and future. We acknowledge the stories, traditions and living cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on the lands we meet, gather and play on.

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