Tape drive funds rural mental health push

A month of taping up has helped fund more than 50 new mental health clinics and programs for communities across Australia, after Greg Inglis’s Goanna Academy wrapped up its Stick With It campaign for 2026.

Thanks to the generosity of players, fans, clubs and communities from coast to coast, more communities than ever will now be able to access Goanna Academy’s mental health clinics and programs.

In just one month, enough Stick With It tape was sold to stretch across more than 32 rugby league fields, from Cairns to Perth, Dubbo to Canberra, and Western Sydney to Melbourne.

NRL and NRLW players including Nicho Hynes, Olivia Kernick, Dane Gagai, Isabelle Kelly and Valentine Holmes wore the tape throughout the weekend to back the campaign.

Goanna Academy Founder Greg Inglis said the response from the rugby league community had moved him deeply.

“We’re incredibly grateful. I’m genuinely blown away by what this community has come together to do. When we launched this campaign, we asked people to put a piece of tape on their wrist. What they’ve given back is so much more than that.

“Every dollar donated, every piece of merch purchased, every player who taped up, it all adds up to something real.

“To clinics in communities that haven’t had this kind of support before. To kids in schools getting the tools to ask for help.

“To people knowing they don’t have to go through this alone.”

Nine Australians lose their life to suicide every day, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience suicide rates around twice that of non-Indigenous Australians. People living in very remote Australia experience suicide rates more than twice as high as those in major cities.

Goanna Academy is Australia’s first Indigenous-owned preventative mental health education provider, founded by proud Dunghutti and Kamilaroi man and NRL Hall of Fame inductee Greg Inglis. Its programs are delivered in schools, communities, workplaces and on Country.

Over the next 12 months, Goanna Academy will deliver more than 50 preventative mental health clinics and programs across Australia, helping to further reduce barriers for communities to access them, particularly in regional and remote areas, with support from the Australian Government and the National Indigenous Australians Agency.

Donations, strapping tape and merchandise remain available at goannaacademy.org.au, with every purchase directly funding the organisation’s mental health education programs.