Eight teams will contest for the honour of 2009 43kg Champions. The 43kg contest has been running since 1966. The eight teams competing are McIntrye, Cunnamulla, Balonne Barwon, Central Downs, Wynnum Manly, Warwick, Western Downs and South Burnett. Teams are coming from as far a Cunnamulla, Lightning Ridge, Goondiwindi, Clifton, Brisbane, Murgon and Chinchilla. Each team will play each other once, they will play two games per day, no semis or finals, the winner is the team with the highest points at the end of the week. The league is great, entertaining football and all the kids love it because there is no-one over 43kg.

The 160 players and there families have booked a large majority of motels and caravan parks. Three venues have been booked to cater and entertain the large crowd. Some of the kids need billets so if any family could open their house to share with some of these kids for the week long stay it would be greatly appreciated. The town should be buzzing in which would usually be a quite part of the year. As hosts we have to entertain these families for the week long event. The families will have a good look around and Tenterfield will be no doubt etched in their minds when they depart on Friday, July 10. The running costs of the carnival add up and hosts, The Border Bears Rugby League Club, have approached some businesses and some businesses have approached the club willing to get behind the carnival with sponsorship, which is fantastic. The club would still be grateful for any cash donation/sponsorship towards the event. There will be a feature in the Tenterfield Star on Wednesday, July 1 in which all sponsors will be highlighted.

The Border Bears currently have two local boys, Tom Landers and Anthony Maybury, who will represent McIntrye.

The McIntrye team is made up from kids from Texas, Tenterfield, Inglewood, Millwood and Goondiwindi. The McIntrye team has had three training sessions in Inglewood and two trial games of which they played extremely well. The 17 young League players play a lot of football for the month, not only do they play for there local clubs on Saturday, they train some Saturday afternoons with their representative duties, play trial games Sunday and also fit in any school representative football on the Sundays as well. It is all demanding but they wouldn't put in the time if they didn't love the sport.