Ballina Seagulls
Junior Rugby League Club
Charity Contribution Agreement
Blindside Charity’s partnership with the Ballina Seagulls Rugby League Club began with a simple objective: help local families keep their children involved in junior Rugby League by easing the financial pressure of registration costs.
Recognising the growing strain of living expenses on families across the Northern Rivers, Blindside approached the Ballina Seagulls with a proposal to support junior players who might otherwise struggle to remain in the game. Ballina Seagulls Junior Rugby League Board Member Brad Simpson embraced the initiative and presented it to the club’s leadership, helping establish what is now becoming an ongoing annual community partnership.
One of the first families supported through this collaboration is Charrellen and her three daughters:
Jayala, Gemma and Shay — all proud Ballina Seagulls juniors. Like many parents in the region, Charrellen works tirelessly to provide opportunities for her children through sport. With the girls participating across several codes including Oztag, Netball, Touch Football and Rugby League, the financial demands of registration fees, uniforms and competition costs quickly accumulate.
After Charrellen reached out to the Ballina Seagulls for assistance, Blindside was able to step in and cover the full cost of the girls’ Rugby League registration fees for the 2026 season.
Initiatives like this sit at the heart of Blindside Charity’s mission — ensuring the success of the Blindside platform translates into meaningful support for grassroots Rugby League. Through its partnership with the Ballina Seagulls, Blindside aims to continue assisting families facing cost-of-living pressure and help ensure that every child who wants to play Rugby League has the opportunity to do so.
The Long-Term Objective
Blindside Charity’s long-term vision is to build something far bigger than individual acts of support.
Our partnership with the Ballina Seagulls represents the first step in developing a sustainable charity blueprint — a model that begins at club level, proves its impact on a small scale, and gradually expands as the Blindside platform continues to grow.
The intention is simple: demonstrate that targeted financial support can meaningfully reduce the barriers families face when enrolling children in junior Rugby League. By working closely with clubs like the Ballina Seagulls, Blindside can refine a framework that identifies families needing assistance, allocates funding transparently, and ensures support reaches players who may otherwise struggle to remain involved.
As Blindside grows through its content, memberships, partnerships and community engagement, that growth will be channelled directly back into grassroots Rugby League.
The long-term ambition is to expand this model beyond a single club and gradually scale it across the entire Northern Rivers Junior Rugby League competition. The goal is not simply to sponsor a handful of players each year, but to build a funding structure capable of subsidising junior registration costs across all participating clubs in the region.
If successfully developed, this blueprint would mean any child in the Northern Rivers who wants to play Rugby League could do so — regardless of financial circumstances — with clubs supported by a system designed to reduce the burden on families. This could lead to more clubs, more players and more talent flooding the region.
It is an ambitious goal and one that will take time, careful growth and strong collaboration with local clubs. But every initiative begins with a first partnership, and through its work with the Ballina Seagulls, Blindside Charity is laying the foundation for a model that could one day support junior Rugby League across the entire Northern Rivers and change the game in a way that’s never been done before.