Hundreds of people flooded into Dubbo for the seven-day long carnival, which concluded on Saturday and King said it had injected about $1 million into the city’s economy.

He is hopeful that success will lead to Dubbo being awarded more events.

“The event has been exceptional. Most states have commented it is one of the best venues they have been to so that is fantastic,” King said.

The event was also a success for the NSW Cyclones teams that included a number of Dubbo players.

The Cyclones were the only outfit to have teams qualify for the finals of all five age groups.

Two of those, the 15 and under boys and 17 and under girls went on to make the grand finals but were unfortunately beaten, however King said that didn’t diminish the achievement.

“Our Cyclone teams, to have all teams make the finals coming together from across a vast country region is really, really outstanding,”King said. 

“There’s plenty to be proud of. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Hopefully we learn from it. Next year we will come back again and hopefully we can make the semi-finals.

“I would say we are punching well above our weight. You have teams like Queensland and the NSW Blues. Victoria got four teams into the finals and four teams into the grand final so that’s huge effort.

“For the Cyclones to get all teams into the finals two years in a row is quite amazing.”

For seven days, Dubbo Sportsworld was packed from 8.30am to 10pm with players and fans and it had 

“It’s an atmosphere like a boxing match with people all around the courts, the noise and the excitement ball after ball,” he said.

“Because there are junior events, parents and family come along and they cheer for all state teams, not just the one their family member is in so it creates an incredible buzz and every team had at least one age group in the grand finals so there were a lot of people who stayed for those.”