Noted league commentator Ray Hadley, a man who has covered countless NRL games as part of the Continuous Call Team, will put his expertise to use to for an under 8s Eglinton Eels match.

Though it won't be a live experience given the current COVID-19 pandemic, Eglinton committee member Laura Thomas said it will still be a massive boost to the Eels.

"I was at training one day and just thought 'How good would it be if you could get a professional, someone who calls the NRL premiership games to do a minis game?'," Thomas said.

"Within 12 hours he got back to me and said absolutely and he was really professional about it. He said can we send field conditions, teams lists, weather conditions, the lot because he's going to study it and treat it as if it's an origin game.

"I went 'Oh my god, that would be amazing'.

"We did it all by correspondence basically. Ben Fry actually organised the filming of the game at our last carnival. So he's actually going to commentate that from a distance and send us back the footage. I am so excited."

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The video of the game with Hadley's commentary will drop soon. It provides the club with a positive as - due to the current lockdown - they were forced to cancel plans to stage a pink round at Cubis Park this Saturday to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Network Australia.

But the committee is still hoping to go pink later in the year for what is the first of many planned charity days for the club.

"It was a group decision with all of the local clubs to cancel the mini mod games just given the circumstances surrounding COVID and Group 10 has actually cancelled under 10s to under 16s," Thomas said.

"This would've been our first one and we have all sorts of plans for the future, we have a three to five year plan up our sleeve and we're hoping to release a few things next year. But this will be the first of many charity rounds and we're hoping to do one each year.

"It could hopefully still go ahead, fingers crossed, we're sort of going down rabbit holes and avenues at the moment as to what dates would work for later in the year. Even then it's subject to COVID, subject to weather - so it is all up in the air, but we're exhausting every possibility to see it go ahead."

Hosting annual charity rounds is part of the Eels' plan to continue to grow in the coming years, Thomas saying it's a case of 'big things but baby steps'.

"We want to expand the club basically. Numbers have been great and we're hoping to extend that up until under 14s," she said.

"We are hoping our 11s side continues to 14s and we can look at getting more players into that competitive age group.

"Slowly but surely over the last three years I've definitely seen improvements in logistics, team numbers, organisation and team spirit in general."

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