WHEN Preston Campbell leads the Indigenous All Stars into battle at Skilled Park in February, it will the little playmaker's finest hour.

While a premiership with the Penrith Panthers and receiving the Dally M Medal as the year's best player in 2001 list high on his achievements there will be no sweeter feeling for the Titans favourite than leading his people against the cream of the NRL competition.

"Rugby league has been good for me and I don't think people would mind me saying that this is one of the best things to have happened for me in rugby league," declared Campbell at yesterday's naming of the team at Brisbane's Parliament House.

"We're not playing for two points, we're not playing for individual honours, it's about everyone who has helped me get this far, my family, and I could not be prouder."

In front of a packed media throng on the Parliementary lawn, Campbell joined Greg Inglis, Scott Prince, Carl Webb, Jamie Soward, Nathan Merritt, PJ Marsh and Jharal Yow Yeh for the team announcement.

Packed with superstars, the squad also includes Johnathan Thurston, Sam Thaiday and big Wendell Sailor, who will be hoping to end his glittering career in style following the announcement of his retirement last week.

The match will be played on February 13.

The squad was selected by the fans, with more than 17,000 votes in just over three weeks of voting.

They will be coached by North Queensland Cowboys' Neil Henry.

Titans skipper Prince, who has played alongside Campbell for the last three seasons, insisted he was proud to be named in a game former indigenous heroes never had the opportunity to play.

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"I would love to see Arthur Beetson a part of this wonderful team of Indigenous Rugby League players. when it comes to RL, ther is no bigger name in the cod than Big Artie. "
Ian Chui Wong

And to do that alongside his good mate makes it even sweeter.

"It's hard to explain really just how much this game means and I'm sure there are a lot of former indigenous players who would be a little envious of us at the moment that we will get to wear this jersey with pride," said Prince.

"But for me to be able to do it with Presto is amazing."

"He's a great little competitor, a great leader and it will be an honour to play not only alongside so many other greats footballers but also under Presto."

Already 16,000 tickets have been sold for the big clash, with confirmation groups would be travelling from far and wide, including the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Canberra and South Australia.

Campbell hopes the majority of those fans are backing them.

"I hope so. It's gets pretty loud out there," he said.

"I've played in some pretty big stadiums but when that place is full it's quite scary being out in the middle and I hope it's like that again."

INDIGENOUS ALL STAR squad (v NRL All Stars at Skilled Park, February 13):
Carl Webb (Nth Qld)
Cory Paterson (Newcastle)
Daine Laurie (Penrith)
George Rose (Manly)
Greg Inglis (Melbourne)
Jamal Idris (Bulldogs)
Jamie Soward (St George Illawarra)
Jharal Yow Yeh (Brisbane)
Joel Thompson (Canberra)
Johnathan Thurston (Nth Qld)
Justin Hodges (Brisbane)
Nathan Merritt (South Sydney)
PJ Marsh (Brisbane)
Preston Campbell (capt, Gold Coast)
Sam Thaiday (Brisbane)
Scott Prince (Gold Coast)
Tom Learoyd-Lahrs (Canberra)
Travis Waddell (Canberra)
Wendell Sailor (St George Illawarra)
Yileen Gordon (Bulldogs)
Coach: Neil Henry (Nth Qld)

The Gold Coast will make rugby league history next season when Skilled Park hosts the inaugural match between the Indigenous DreamTime team and an NRL All Stars.

The official announcement will be made tomorrow at Robina as NRL stars Benji Marshall, Johnathan Thurston, Preston Campbell and North Queensland coach Neil Henry gather to launch the event, to be held on February 13 each year as a mark of commemoration for Kevin Rudd's apology to indigenous Australians.

Melbourne had made a play for the event but Skilled Park, home of the Gold Coast Titans, will now be the stage for a contest that will feature the game's biggest names, making it the football equivalent of an NBA All Star game with a deeper message.

Titans managing director Michael Searle was a leading proponent for the game and had been campaigning the Queensland Government to make a bid for the event.

"This is clearly a massive event," Searle told the Sydney Morning Herald last month. "I believe that rugby league has the highest number of indigenous players in Australian sport on a per capita basis. Imagine the players that will be involved."

The idea for the fixture came from the curtain-raiser to last year's opening World Cup match, in which the DreamTime team played NZ Maori before the Kangaroos-Kiwis clash. Many of the Australian players of Aboriginal heritage expressed a desire to represent their people as well as their country.

According to a survey of NRL players undertaken last month, 10.9 per cent, or 47 players, in its clubs full-time squads are indigenous. That figure is slightly higher in the NYC under-20s competition.

Under the model being considered for the selection of the teams, the public will have some input and it is proposed that the All Stars team would comprise of one player from each of the 16 NRL clubs, either including or in addition to the Australian and New Zealand captains in the end-of-season Four Nations tournament.

There is also a suggestion to invite a Papua New Guinea player.

The indigenous team would feature some of the biggest stars in the NRL, with St George Illawarra's Jamie Soward likely to have to settle for a place on the bench at best.

Australian halfback Thurston, centres Greg Inglis and Justin Hodges and second-rower Sam Thaiday are certain selections, while the likes of Matt Bowen, Scott Prince and Nathan Merritt would also be expected to feature in an All Star back line.

Fitting the likes of Preston Campbell, Jamal Idris and Willie Tonga into the side could result in a number of positional changes, but the indigenous team would also be able to field a strong forward pack, with Carl Webb and Tom Learoyd-Lahrs both eligible.

Possible Indigenous DreamTime team

Fullback: Preston Campbell (Titans)
Wing: Nathan Merritt (Rabbitohs)
Centre: Greg Inglis (Storm)
Centre: Justin Hodges (Broncos)
Wing: Jamal Idris (Bulldogs)
Five-eighth: Scott Prince (Titans)
Halfback: Johnathan Thurston (Cowboys)
Prop: Carl Webb (Cowboys)
Hooker: Travis Waddell (Raiders)
Prop: Sam Thaiday (Broncos)
Second row: Tom Learoyd-Lars (Raiders)
Second row: Cory Paterson (Knights)
Lock: Willie Tonga (Cowboys)

Possible reserves Jamie Soward (Dragons), George Rose (Sea Eagles), Daine Laurie (Tigers), Wendell Sailor (Dragons), Jharal Yow Yeh (Broncos)

Islanders are playing a starring role in the NRL. Andrew Stevenson goes back through the generations to trace their rugby league heritage.

Israel Folau might be the greatest, FuiFui MoiMoi the strongest, Willie Mason the loudest, Jarryd Hayne the flashiest and Sonny Bill Williams the furthest away. What none of them can claim to be, no matter their prodigious talents, is the first.

"Polys", or Islanders, have transformed rugby league in Australia in the past decade. Every dressing room has players who trace their family history to the islands of the Pacific, most particularly Samoa, Tonga and Maoris from New Zealand, injecting their own particular brand of physicality and passion into rugby league. No team in the NRL this season will play without someone from the Pacific in their squad; some teams will name up to seven players in their 17.

To find the first Islander/Polynesian player in Sydney you have to travel back through the mists of rugby league time, way back to 1923 when, according to football historian Ian Heads, St George signed Brownie Paki for a season after seeing him play for the 1922 Maori side. "He came to Sydney on a steamer and was the first outsider specifically imported to the Sydney competition," said Heads.

Next in line, Heads cites Walter Muffing, a winger, again with St George in the 1940s, with a background among the cane-cutting communities of far North Queensland. Newspapers described him as an immensely popular player who "does not care how many tacklers come at him" - a description that rings true down the years when one watches Folau in full-flight.

Paki and Muffing came and went with no one much to follow them. So, too, the Fijian brothers, Apisai and Inosi Toga, who played in the red V in the late 1960s and 1970s. Apisai died tragically, after collapsing at training in 1973 with tetanus poisoning.

The trickle was starting. Probably the first Samoan-born player was Oscar Danielson, a tough, ball-playing forward in the Arthur Beetson mould who played three seasons with Newtown from 1970-72. Danielson came from New Zealand on a contract worth $4000 a year. It was good money then; not by today's standards. "I was only a $1 man; now they're $1million men," he said with a wry laugh.

Why he came was easy and the answer, just like the description of Muffing, remains largely unchanged for so many Polynesian players. "In my life I was always a footballer," he said.

The words could almost spring from the mouth of Andrew and David Fifita, Toyota Cup Tigers and nephews of both St George star John Fifita and footballer-boxer Solomon Haumono. An NRL spot, said Andrew with passion, "is what I've been waiting for my whole life. Even now, we're only one step away, you feel so proud. Even if it was only one game and you sat on the bench it would be such a great feeling."

Or Dane Sorensen, of Tongan and Danish background, who arrived at Sydney airport in 1977 in mismatched thongs, with a suitcase and a surfboard. "I never thought of failure. I knew I had to succeed because I had nothing else. It was a great opportunity but I knew it was my destiny; it was the natural thing for me to do," he said.

Sorensen, followed to Cronulla by his rampaging brother Kurt, didn't feel like a pioneer. "I felt nothing. All I felt was how hot it was. But really there wasn't time to think," said Sorensen, who still lives in the Shire. "You were just too busy playing every week and training." And surviving in a tough school. Danielson doesn't recount racist abuse, just hard men. "In those days we copped stick everywhere. We'd cop everything and when we copped one we'd cop them," he said. "It was survival in the paddock."

Said Sorensen: "It was the best time for rugby league - when men were men and when you got knocked out you got knocked out."

Polynesian players have never been scared about mixing it. It's the way they're raised, said David Fifita. "Dad [Sione] didn't tell us much, just to hit them h