Proud Murri boy Quaden Bayles will take centre stage on Saturday night when he walks out onto Gold Coast Stadium hand-in-hand alongside Indigenous All Stars captain Joel Thompson.

The 9-year-old said he has been looking forward to the moment after what has been a difficult week.

On Wednesday, Quaden was bullied at his Brisbane school when a fellow student made references about his height while “patting him on the head like a puppy”.

Quaden was born with achondroplasia, the most common form of Dwarfism, and has had to deal with incidents such as this since he was three.