He's only 4 years late! lol the WARL backed by a group of businessmen who were the committee for developing the business case for the WA Reds, who then became the WC pirates bid started to look in 2012 at putting a perth team in ESL after their ongoing frustrations at the lack of NRL vision for expansion to WA. I honestly believe the main reason the NRl moved quickly to threaten the WARL to hand over control to NRLHQ was to cut off this potential threat. The NRl threatened to remove all grant funding to the WARL unless the board accepted NRL ownership, this happened, most of the board and the bid committee walked away in disgust at the NRL's behaviour and the threat to join ESL was averted.
Practically the new direct Perth to London flight makes it feasible but it would be damn hard going for the Perth players. They would probably need to do 3 in UK, 3 in perth rotation with some byes to have a chance of it working.
