20 Next Generation Perth Bears: Inside the six-year pathways plan to debut a home-grown NRL star
A rugby league shockwave is about to pulse through Western Australia on the back of the launch of the Perth Bears academy. These are the 20 home-grown juniors on the fast-track to NRL debuts.
Pamela Whaley
Pamela Whaley
@pamelawhaley
7 min read
April 20, 2026 - 5:00AM
A rugby league shockwave is about to pulse through Western Australia on the back of the launch of the Perth Bears academy. These are the 20 home-grown juniors on the fast-track to NRL debuts.
Build it and they will come.
It’s less than a year before the start of an NRL era for Perth Bears but they’re already preparing the next generation. It’s about the long crawl.
Countless hours of video, pitches to parents and visits to junior clubs has produced 20 of the brightest young players in Western Australia selected for the inaugural academy with more to come over coming months in Brisbane and North Sydney.
Players who could have been lost to rival clubs, or the sport, now have a pathway to the top.
The aim is to make an NRL player out of them over the next six seasons as well as stop a massive leak of West Australian talent moving east every year to chase their dreams.
Perth Bears officially launch their academy ahead of the 2027 season.
BEARS’ TIMELINE DEBUT
Last week, Perth Bears announced their inaugural Bear Tracks academy, the start of the six-year plan to produce home-grown talent in the NRL by 2031.
It’s the genesis of the Bears’ next generation, beginning with a group of 14 to 17-year-olds among some of the best young athletes in WA.
They’ll be pushed, tested and trained with the aim of fielding an SG Ball team in 2029, Harold Matthews in 2030, and preparing them for on-field and travel demands so they’re NRL-ready by 2031.
Head of elite pathways Ian Millward has been running the program along with coach Mal Meninga and assistant Ben Gardner. There was a specific strategy in targeting this age group.
“By 2029, you would expect there’d be a couple of really good players out of that, say there’s two or three local boys,” Millward says.
“So then you’d be looking at their next advancement after under-19s, which would be an NRL training contract.
“An NRL training contract would then take them to 2030. I reckon we’d like to be starting to see something in 31.”
Establishing a complete pipeline through the club from juniors through to NRL is vital.
“One of the biggest things for us is whenever a Perth boy relocated with their family to Queensland, they were still behind the Queensland boys who were playing Cyril Connell or Mal Meninga Cup, so they still didn’t make it,” Millward says.
“We’ve already had a couple of families that have moved back wanting to try to start with Perth Bears. I was shocked when I got the job how many families actually had migrated under that one proviso.”
Perth Bears academy launches in WA. Picture: Perth Bears
Perth Bears academy launches in WA. Picture: Perth Bears
Perth Bears pathways guns in the new program. Picture: Perth Bears
Perth Bears pathways guns in the new program. Picture: Perth Bears
Perth Bears pathways players at the launch of the new program. Picture: Perth Bears
Perth Bears pathways players at the launch of the new program. Picture: Perth Bears
EAST EXODUS & RIVAL CODES
According to NRLWA chief executive John Sackson, the state loses 20 players on average per year as they chase a career in rugby league in the east.
The AFL in particular has such a foothold in Western Australia with West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers and a lack of a full pathway to the NRL in the state has made families either move or switch codes.
“On average every year, particularly in the last five-plus years, maybe even a few more, we’ve been losing around 20 kids or young players under the age of 20 that have packed up and left Perth to various points on the east coast,” Sackson says.
“Be it Sydney, be it Brisbane, be it rugby league schools in southeast Queensland or in Sydney, with the backing of their parents.
“These are the more talented kids to pursue rugby league careers by going to rugby league academies at various clubs or going to the schools that have amazing rugby league programs.”
There’s a stack of WA-born or -raised players in the NRL and NRLW, including Newcastle captain Kalyn Ponga, Wests Tigers forward Royce Hunt (Willagee Bears), NSW Origin forward Kennedy Cherrington (South Perth Lions) and Kiwi Ferns centre Shanice Parker (Willagee Bears).
With no pathway to the NRL, Sackson has been powerless to stop it – until now.
“It’s a great aspirational motivation for these young players,” he says.
“Eventually, we’ll be moving into the women’s game as well because we produce quite a number of female players in the NRLW and have played for both Australia and New Zealand, who played all their junior rugby league in Perth.
“We look forward to the day that the Bears establish themselves and the foundation is strong.”
Millward’s job over the next few years is pitching for the best talent from around the state to stay in WA but also convince families it’s a better option than clubs in NSW, Queensland, Melbourne or New Zealand.
They’ll be competing with Papua New Guinea too once the 19th franchise enters the competition in 2028.
“If you look at the first year, you would think a high percentage will come out of WA, but in three years’ time you would expect too that we’ve convinced some families that it’s a great place to go and live and to start schooling,” Millward says.
“It’s a real attraction for families to recruit, not just the player. That’s going to be really important to us.”
BUILDING THE PIPELINE
Setting up Bear Tracks in Perth is the first step but Brisbane East and North Sydney are next in their hunt for new talent for the next generation.
By next year, the aim is to play academy games between all three.
A big priority is boosting the standard of local first grade with quality coaching so the depth is available to recruit from, or should Meninga need extra bodies at a training session in 2027.
“We wanted to dive in really deep, right away,” Millward says. “First of all, we think we have a responsibility to improve the standard of competitions in WA.
“Secondly, we want to improve the standard of the open competition because, if the head coach wants to play some players or there’s an outstanding 18- or 19-year-old, he can play in the local comp.
Perth Bears.
“We want to work really closely with NRLWA. We haven’t finalised everything yet but we want to constantly keep talking about how we can do this together.”
The Bears intentionally picked four coaches to help develop skills and build on a connection to the community.
They are:
■ Kieran Liss from Rockingham School, which has a rugby league curriculum;
■ Martin Collis, who has coached under-17s schoolboys;
■ Jhai Kapea, who also coaches under-17s locally with Alkimos Tigers and has a Polynesian background; and
■ Female coach Kailey Thompson, with plans to develop and eventually move her into the club’s NRLW program.
From there, they picked 20 players to launch the inaugural academy.
They kick off with a two-week program with touch-points during the year and finish with an intensive four-month program in November which is hoped will sort out players with NRL potential.
“All those players, if we look at 2029, the guy who started in 2026 in our academy, that gives us a minimum of three years to start developing him,” Millward says.
“In the old days with Western Reds, when they came into those competitions, they didn’t have the resources and the personnel to be able to delve as deep as we can.
“Perth Bears is a bigger identity than the Reds. So for us, it’s really important the pathways are the basis of everything.
“We delivered to the parents some of our expectations and standards. “Everything starts with character and we’re really strong on that, we’re really going strong on compliance.
“This is not going to be easy for some boys over there because when they start in November for three days a week and they haven’t been used to that, it’s going to be hard.
“It’ll sort the wheat from the chaff. We’re going to be very active in the local competition this year because, even though they might not be in the academy at the moment, we’re going to keep reviewing it.
“We want to reward people over there.
“If he has really good character and showing talent, we want to include him in things.
“That’s going to be an ongoing process in bringing people up and hopefully, by starting now, we have a minimum of three years with them.”
WHERE ARE THEY FROM?
Since the NRL announced its expansion into Perth, the numbers have boomed.
Year-on-year, total player registrations are up nine per cent, registrations for juniors aged 6-18 are up 17 per cent and player registrations have risen 23 per cent in the 13-15 age bracket.
Fremantle, Joondalup, Ellenbrook and Rockingham are the biggest clubs in terms of participation with Ellenbrook up 20 per cent and Rockingham up seven per cent compared to this time last year.
That’s reflected in the Bear Tracks academy.
Willagee Bears, Kwinana Titans, Ellenbrook Rabbitohs, Kalamunda Bulldogs, Alkimos Tigers and Rockingham Sharks are all represented.
“I looked at a lot of videos of games of 14, 15 and 16-year-olds,” Millward says of helping assemble the squad.
“I watched the grand finals. I watched some schoolboy games.
“It wasn’t just the good players. I circled players that I could see what sort of frame they were, how I thought parts of their game would grow in four years’ time and we formed a selection panel from there to make the final decisions.”
Inside the plan to debut a home-grown Perth Bear in 2031.
Inside the plan to debut a home-grown Perth Bear in 2031.
Sporting high schools are also a huge part of the plan.
In Brisbane and Sydney, rugby league high schools are a vital part of the NRL system in which players are exposed to quality training and competitions to prepare them for the junior representative system.
There are nine high schools in the Perth area with rugby league on the curriculum but the WA government and NRLWA intend to double it over the next few years.
“We want to get it to 20-plus,” Sackson says.
“If we have high schools with rugby league on the curriculum, that’s going to be harnessed really well.
“It’s going to be fed into the local club competitions, development pathways.
“That’s a lot of money to be invested by the government into rugby league development in this state.
“It’s really significant and we think it’s going to be incredibly productive.
“And there’s a massive incentive and desire by both the Bears and NRLWA to develop homegrown talent to try to get players over the next three to five years coming through the local pathway system and wearing the black and red of Perth Bears.”
