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West Coast Pirates Bid News

Perth Red

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CAPTAIN JACKSON :blue_heart:

Former Ellenbrook Rabbitohs Rugby League Club and West Coast Pirates junior Jackson Topine has been named captain of NSW Blues U18's ahead of tonight's State of Origin curtain raiser!

#NRLWAItsPossible
 

titoelcolombiano

First Grade
Messages
5,276
CAPTAIN JACKSON :blue_heart:

Former Ellenbrook Rabbitohs Rugby League Club and West Coast Pirates junior Jackson Topine has been named captain of NSW Blues U18's ahead of tonight's State of Origin curtain raiser!

#NRLWAItsPossible

I get that his team plays in the NSWRL but it is wrong that juniors from outside of NSW and QLD are getting shoe-horned into State of Origin setups.
 

Dragonwest

Juniors
Messages
1,652
CAPTAIN JACKSON :blue_heart:

Former Ellenbrook Rabbitohs Rugby League Club and West Coast Pirates junior Jackson Topine has been named captain of NSW Blues U18's ahead of tonight's State of Origin curtain raiser!

#NRLWAItsPossible

Former North Beach & Ellenbrook Rabbitohs Rugby League Club and West Coast Pirates junior Jackson Topine has been named captain of NSW Blues U18's ahead of tonight's State of Origin curtain raiser!
 

Perth Red

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65,411
Every now and then Matt Fuller closes his eyes and listens to the chant inside his head.

It’s Sunday, March 12, 1995, and 24,932 fans have the WACA packed tighter than a prop forward’s head tape for the Western Reds’ first ever game in the NSW Rugby League.

Fuller donned the No. 9 jersey as hooker that day, the first of 59 games that would become the club record in its short tenure at the elite level, as the Reds beat St George 28-16.

“It was loud and deafening and it inspired us in that first year. And it was a big reason why we won 11 games of 22. It was an unbelievable time,” Fuller says.

“There was a famous quote from our coach Pete Mulholland that it took us two years to get ready for the first game, then we had a week to get ready for the second game. That was very true, that’s exactly how it felt.”

After the high of round one, came the first road trip, to Newcastle.

“We led 10-nil early on and then get flogged (54-14), so back to earth,” Fuller says.

Fuller is one of a handful of players who remained in Perth after the team folded, just a year after it morphed into the Perth Reds as part of News Limited’s doomed Super League competition.

A quarter of a century later, 48-year-old Fuller will join most of his old Reds’ teammates for a reunion next Saturday at North Beach Rugby League Club. The get together coincides with Perth’s first ever State of Origin game, tomorrow week at Optus Stadium, just a penalty goal kick or two away from their old home ground.

Fuller reflects on the Reds’ turbulent history and makes a stunning call.

“If Super League hadn’t come in that side would have won a premiership,” he says.

“You only have to look at Melbourne Storm, who got most of our Junior Reds and a sprinkling of senior players like Rod Howe, Matt Geyer, Robbie Kearns and Wayne Evans. They won the premiership in one year (their second season) in 1999. They were given our blueprint, and a lot of our resources, because we’d folded.”

Fuller hopes Perth heeds the lessons of its first incarnation if it gets another full-time NRL team.

“When the ARL and Super League war started, the Reds at the time were supported by the ARL and they jumped ship. In hindsight, it was their death because the ARL wouldn’t take them back, even when the Super League war had finished,” he says.

“The Reds aligned themselves with Super League very early on for their survival, which probably shows they were bleeding financially and felt they could be propped up by News Limited.

“The only positive if there is one, is that the game became a lot stronger from it. Once the war finished, rugby league became stronger.”

The Western Reds’ financial model was doomed from day one. They had a $1.8 million salary cap and had to pay not only their only players, headed by big signings Brad MacKay and Mark Geyer, but visiting teams’ accommodation and air fares. By the time Super League came knocking, the Reds were haemorrhaging and had no choice but to sign on with the rival competition.

The schism might have led to the Reds’ downfall but Super League meant a windfall for players. Fuller’s salary went from $100,000 to $250,000 “overnight”.

“Financially it was great for players and I was about the seventh or eighth highest paid,” he says.

“I was on holidays in Mandurah and got a phone call saying come straight to the Burswood. I walked into a room and was told we were going to Super League and they gave us $30,000 that night just to sit down and talk with them.”

Mulholland, the inaugural coach and now a recruitment manager for Canberra Raiders, hopes to join his old charges for the reunion if health permits. He’s battling lymphoma and has been energised by the support from his rugby family.

https://thewest.com.au/sport/rugby-...ects-on-an-era-of-western-reds-ng-b881231646z
 
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titoelcolombiano

First Grade
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5,276
@Perth Red

It is my understanding that the WA Pirates are a continuation of the Western Reds, is that correct? Same club but just rebranded a few years back. If so and they gain entry to the NRL. Would the club records continue from the 1995 - 1997 era?
 

Perth Red

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65,411
@Perth Red

It is my understanding that the WA Pirates are a continuation of the Western Reds, is that correct? Same club but just rebranded a few years back. If so and they gain entry to the NRL. Would the club records continue from the 1995 - 1997 era?

No hard and fast on this one. Id suggest not as they would be a totally different club with a 25year gap between them! The Reds brand was relaunched in 2013ish to play in the Jim Beam cup for a couple of years under the WA Reds brand, but that set up was closed down and pulled out of JB cup and WC Pirates launched to play in SG Ball. It is a tenuous link other than WARL/NRLWA have been involved in all the iterations expect Perth Reds in 97 which was News Ltd ran.
 

titoelcolombiano

First Grade
Messages
5,276
No hard and fast on this one. Id suggest not as they would be a totally different club with a 25year gap between them! The Reds brand was relaunched in 2013ish to play in the Jim Beam cup for a couple of years under the WA Reds brand, but that set up was closed down and pulled out of JB cup and WC Pirates launched to play in SG Ball. It is a tenuous link other than WARL/NRLWA have been involved in all the iterations expect Perth Reds in 97 which was News Ltd ran.

Thanks mate - good to see the colours retained for an historic link for the fans when they make their triumphant return in 2023 ;)
 

Perth Red

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NRL to monitor Perth Origin experiment
The one thing missing is home-ground advantage. This is FIFO Origin and not since the mining boom have so many muscular young men come to Perth threatening to create havoc.

The difference — fingers crossed — is that the physical encounters will take place on the granite surface of Perth's stadium, not in the bars and nightclubs of Northbridge.

Which begs the question — beyond a lucrative payday from the new stadium's ambitious operators and the Western Australia Government, what benefit will staging Origin in a distant, AFL-obsessed city achieve for a largely stay-at-home match?
It is more than 20 years since the briefly fashionable Western/Perth Reds were shut down after four moderately successful seasons, a victim of the Super League armistice and its own failing financial fortunes.

Now, despite the self-interested myopia of the Sydney club war lords, expansion is back on the NRL's agenda. The league's chief executive Todd Greenberg said as much in March when he declared expansion was the "adult conversation we have to have".

This seemed a deliberate choice of words given that, when the NRL club chiefs gathered to bicker over the proceeds of lucrative media rights deals and sponsorships, there seemed a noticeable shortage of grown-ups around the table.

That the 60,000-capacity stadium in the west was sold out well in advance of the match will embolden the ambitious claims of Perth boosters eager to obtain an NRL licence, although historians will be wary of equating the one-off sugar hit of an Origin blockbuster with the long-term sustainability of a local team.

Best to wait for the NRL to provide a cogent expansion strategy and simply enjoy the latest instalment of an event so predictably entertaining it would draw a crowd on Neptune.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/sport/rug...-to-live-up-to-blockbuster-billing/ar-AADaUpT
 

Perth Red

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WA men’s state team got to train and play a semi tackle game against the maroons this week, what a buzz for the local lads!

A160E770-66F5-4B2D-A64E-56E1DA1AB84B.jpeg
 

Stormwarrior82

Juniors
Messages
1,036
It’s rubbish.
1. Forest is union through and through
2. Greenberg is doing nothing proactive as he has no clue what to do about expansion

Would you prefer they not try and talk to him? You complain about them not trying and then complain about them trying.

At least it’s something. I think it will be a stretch that Forrest will commit and yes he seems rugby through and through. But I also think he is just realizing how badly run aus rugby is and that their future is looking bleak. also with all the money he has used to fund an entire competition/ and will continue to do so for a long long time, is a long way from a business board room. He is also a proud WA businessman. And being able to support/fund a Perth team in a nsw/qld dominant code would not only be good business sense for his current endeavors but also for the wa people that want a nrl side.
 

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