The inaugural carnival will be held at Port Macquarie on Thursday and Friday.

Tamworth is sending over two teams - the aptly named Gleesons and Hazlewoods.

Barry Everingham will lead the Gleesons, named after Tamworth's first Test player John Gleeson.

Richard Rowlings will skipper the side named in honour of the world’s top-ranked paceman Josh Hazlewood.

Both sides are a mix of players for whom the passion for the game hasn’t quite burned out yet, and those that the whites have been a fair while packed away.

“A great majority of the blokes playing haven’t been playing for a long time,” Everingham said.

“That’s the exciting thing for us that have been pushing the vets.”

He said one of the great things about vets is that you can play when you can play, and interest is certainly growing with several other players keen to be involved in the future.

They’ve been drawn to play the Port Jackson Red side in their first game with the Hazlewood’s to face New England.

“The whole competition is unknown as far as what we’re going to come up against,” Everingham said.

“(But) We’re not going with any great expectations of setting the world on fire. 

“We’re just going for fun.”

Everingham will be one of the key batsmen along with Steve Wilson and John Fish, while with the ball Craig Salter and Jim Pittman will lead the charge backed up by Pete Summerall, who bowls good left-arm medium.

Derek Attwell also bowled a good six over spell in Sunday’s trial against Armidale and could be a darkhorse for them with his leg-spin.

Rowlings will open the bowling for his side alongside Greg Kellett, who will be a real weapon with the ball with his “wily old spin”.

“After that we’ve got a lot of medium pacers,” Rowlings said.

With the bat they should “go alright”.

“We’ve got plenty of blokes that can score runs for us,” he said.

Andrew Stevenson and Peter Annis-Brown both looked in pretty good touch on Sunday, as did Kellett, although he probably won’t be opening the batting.