There’s a Bear in there: Will NRL’s foundation club truly live on in Perth bid?
Dan Walsh
By Dan Walsh
August 11, 2024 — 7.45pm
The knees grow weak on grown men when the sun hits just right at North Sydney Oval.
So naturally, the most romantic of all rugby league narratives – the Bears are back, baby – has hit right in the feels, and hit hard.
On Wednesday, a final submission will be put to the NRL for the Bears to return in a joint expansion bid alongside a West Australian consortium, 25 years after Norths were dragged into the unholy Northern Eagles merger and obscurity shortly after.
The Western Bears are considered a fait accompli to win an 18th club licence from the NRL to join the competition in 2027. A Papua New Guinea side – with a $600 million Australian government investment – is earmarked to follow a year later.
At North Sydney Oval on Sunday, the table-topping Bears NSW Cup side threatened a late comeback, too, against Newtown, but even rugby league’s capacity for weak-kneed romantics has its limits and the Jets prevailed 18-8.
Nostalgia is one hell of an aphrodisiac, though. And 116 years of Bears history is an irresistible commodity – which is why there have been approximately 25,000 stories about the Bears coming back in one form or another over the past 25 years.
From one bear to another: Hopes are high North Sydney’s NRL exile is about to end.
Officials from both North Sydney and the Perth consortium are bound by NRL nondisclosure agreements, and declined to comment. All will be revealed, they intimated, once the August 14 submission deadline passes.
But ARL Chairman Peter V’landys has been vocal about his desire to bring back the Bears, and – as has been suggested throughout months of negotiations between Perth and North Sydney – not merely as window dressing on a WA club.
“It must swell you with pride to see your side’s socks running around in a grand final,” was the cutting gibe of Rabbitohs tragic Andrew Denton to an Illawarra supporter when St George Illawarra surged to the 1999 decider.
The Western Bears marriage is every bit as delicate as that of St George and Illawarra. Proposals in the bid’s expansion submission remain just that.
Bears fans Craig Gray and Josh Averell at North Sydney Oval on Sunday for the NSW Cup match against Newtown.
The Bears logo is expected to be recast for the new side, while the iconic red, black and white colours will have a dash of yellow added in a nod to the Western Reds of the 1990s.
Lifelong Bears fans Josh Averell and Craig Gray drove from Newcastle for Sunday’s game, Averell sporting a knockoff Reds jersey he found in a Balinese back alley to mark the occasion.
As a truly West Australian side, home games will be played out of Perth’s HBF Park, with one pre-season match slated for North Sydney Oval and another heritage game to be played in Sydney or the Central Coast during the NRL season.
Arch rivals Manly loom as the obvious opponent. And for that first storied showdown with their old sparring partners, a crowd pushing towards Allianz Stadium’s 45,000-capacity already seems far likelier than the 15,000 that would hang from the North Sydney Oval fig trees and commentary tower.
“And that’s it, we don’t care where they play. The Bears are the Bears,” Gray said. “We’re already planning to go to Western Australia for games. You can’t tell me they’re not the Bears. I’ll be that guy at every away game in that first year – Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane.
“It’s been a bloody long haul for 25 years. To see the Bears back on the field in the NRL, it’ll all be worth it.”
The Bears’ history and standing in the game makes the partnership worth it for WA, too, especially when combined with North Sydney’s pathways and junior catchments.
Peter Cumins, boss of the Perth consortium and executive chairman of Cash Converters – the major sponsor on those old Western Reds jerseys – wasn’t wrong when he spelled out the hurdles to partnering with the Bears or Jets in June.
West Australians are as parochial as they come and given a century of rugby league history won’t go far with them, Cumins’ preference was for a standalone WA side.
“But I’m a commercial animal,” Cumins told this masthead following NRL advice along the same lines. “And if the case [for a North Sydney marriage] is compelling, you’d be silly not to consider it.”
Perth undoubtedly has an appetite for the game. Particularly at corporate and government level. WA Premier Roger Cook beat the drum as loudly as anyone when the Roosters and Dolphins recently sold out HBF Park’s 20,000 seats in what is typically a low-drawing Friday 6pm slot – which of course swings into 8pm prime time on the East Coast.
It’s enough to make knees go weak for the NRL and broadcasters alike. Not to mention those on the old North Sydney hill.
In rugby league, nostalgia is a powerful and lucrative commodity. So as the iconic North Sydney Bears align with the NRL’s latest expansion outfit, what do the true believers make of it?
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