True believers back Bears to succeed

The Perth Bears rugby league team, a marriage of sorts between the state and the North Sydney Bears, will embrace a “huge army” of about 220,000 supporters when it kicks off in 2027.

North Sydney Bears club legend Billy Moore hailed Premier Roger Cook’s announcement in early May that the Perth Bears had been admitted into an expanded NRL competition.

The move, which comes with an initial $65.6 million investment from WA over seven years, followed months of negotiations between the state government and rugby league powerbrokers.

Mr Moore has no doubt Western Australians will learn very quickly how passionate and powerful the historic side of the Bears is.

“It’s a huge army, around 220,000-strong waiting to reconnect,” he told Business News.

“And you don’t sit dormant for 26 years and come back to life if you are not passionate.

“It’s never happened before, and it’ll never happen again in world sport.”

This is a story about two cities and fan bases and how they secured one future, following a rollercoaster of emotions over more than a quarter of a century.

Established in 1908, the North Sydney Bears were a foundation club of the long-standing New South Wales Rugby League, winning first grade premierships in 1921 and 1922.

After navigating several lean periods of on-field success, the Bears came close on four occasions in reaching a grand final in the 1990s – losing the 1991, 1994, 1996 and 1997 preliminary finals to Canberra Raiders, St George Dragons and Newcastle Knights.

The modern NRL was founded in 1998.

On October 15, 1999, the NRL announced that the Bears, which were beset by financial and venue based problems due to record rainfall at their proposed new home ground at Grahame Park in Gosford on the Central Coast during the season, would no longer continue in its own right as an NRL franchise in 2000, as part of a “rationalised” 14-team competition.

Instead, it formed a joint venture with the Manly Sea Eagles, its hated rival, to become the Northern Eagles, which went belly up at the end of 2002.

At the end of the 2002 season, the Sea Eagles, who had control of the joint venture licence, elected to revert to a standalone entity, seemingly condemning Norths to a life in second-tier state league competition.

Like scores of diehard Norths fans, board member and club stalwart Mr Moore was devastated at what had happened to his beloved club at the end of 1999, and the 211-gamer called time on his career, instead of playing for the merged entity.

“Because at (age) 28, the Bears effectively ceased to exist so when they stopped, I didn’t want to play on,” he told Business News.

“I had offers to play elsewhere, but I had the opportunity to go back to Queensland, and I did, sort of cap in hand.

“I was just dirty on the game and dirty at the fact that after 92 years, the game could go forward without a foundation club such as the Bears, and I lost a bit of respect for the game itself and all those involved.

“I still loved the sport and the fact that it, and Norths especially, had allowed me to live my dream, and I will never forget that.”

Mr Moore, a Norths team of the century member who also represented both Queensland and Australia during his playing days, said the May 8 announcement meant a lot to many Bears fans who fell out of love with rugby league when their side departed.

“I went down with that ship, and it was on my watch it happened,” he said.

“So, I felt a very personal disappointment in the fact it fell apart.

“And obviously being a part of the brand re-establishment and the new marriage with the west (WA) is incredibly satisfying, because in a sense to me, it rights the wrongs.

“It rights the wrongs that the game imposed on my club.

“And all the fans, players, current players … all those that had the red and black, this is now redemption time to them.

“But as much as I look back when we look through the lens of how good it is, the great thing is, the energy of the future is brought forward because of the west.

“The future lays there. The history is in the east and the future is in the west.

“What we’ve got here is two histories and one future. Two cities, one team.

“The first bi-coastal brand in Australia. This will be a juggernaut.”

Between 1995 and 1997, the Western Reds – re-branded as the Perth Reds in their final season – participated in both the Australian Rugby League and Super League competitions, playing matches at the WACA ground.

Ahead of the NRL commencing in 1998, several clubs across both the ARL and Super League competitions fell by the wayside, and the Reds were wound up late in 1997.

This was primarily due to the club having a debt of around $10 million, because of being required to pay for flights and accommodation of opposing sides travelling to Perth.

When the Reds died, so too did several clubs in the previously flourishing state league competition before the end of the decade.

Between 1998 and 2025, WA’s rugby league community grabbed every opportunity presented to it, with regular season and State of Origin matches held in front of big crowds.

Appointed in 2010, NRL WA chief executive John Sackson has advocated passionately over more than 15 years for a franchise to return to Perth.

Initially through the establishment of the WA Reds – which competed in second tier competitions in NSW – through to the re-branded junior representative West Coast Pirates in SG Ball until the COVID-affected 2020 season, WA left no stone unturned in its bid to convince NRL powerbrokers it deserved another chance.

NRL WA, the state governing body for rugby league in the west, paid for the accommodation and meals of all visiting SG Ball sides to Perth when they played the Pirates, while the NSWRL paid for the visiting sides’ flights and ground transfers.

Mr Cook confirmed the Australian Rugby League Commission would cover costs involved with running the club during the initial seven years of state government support.

Initially, it had appeared a private consortium led by Cash Converters executive deputy chair Peter Cumins, dubbed the Western Bears, was set to get the green light from the ARLC last year.

However, ARLC chair Peter V’landys announced in October last year the consortium’s bid had been rejected, with rugby league powerbrokers instead keen to pursue a business model involving support from the WA government.

Mr Cumins has been a substantial investor in the Reds and WA grassroots rugby league for several decades.

Off the back of lengthy negotiations, Mr Cook confirmed the state government would invest $65.6 million into the Bears over a seven-year period – with $35 million going towards grassroots development, and $5.6 million towards match day support and tourism-based marketing.

Assured the club would not be charged a licence fee, every dollar spent by the state government will remain in WA.

The Bears will also benefit from a new high-performance centre in Malaga, which they will share with the Andrew Forrest-backed Western Force rugby union team.

The state committed $20 million to that project during the election campaign.

Mr V’landys told the media in Perth he was “super confident” the club would be a force from 2027 onwards.

“After five years, the club will revert to the membership,” he said.

“They’ll then be owned by the members of the club, and they’ll then select the board just like every other club.

“It was important to us that this was owned by the people of Western Australia, and this was a very strong point by the premier.

“He wanted this as a Western Australian-owned team.

“We don’t want a single owner or owners. We want the people of Western Australia to own it.”

Early moves to set the Bears up for success in the local market appear to have ruffled some feathers.

Seven days after the team was announced, the NRL confirmed the shock recruitment of Seven West Media director of news and current affairs Anthony De Ceglie, a former editor-in-chief of The West Australian newspaper, as the Bears’ inaugural chief executive.

The appointment, only a year after the Sydney-based Mr De Ceglie was promoted to the national role from his position at The West, came at odds with the editorial slant of the Kerry Stokes-backed paper that the new Bears boss used to run.

It will be Mr De Ceglie’s first professional role outside of news media.

The appointment was a footnote on the local paper’s reporting of changes within its own organisation, which also holds the broadcast rights to the Australian Football League.

A week before Mr De Ceglie was announced as the Bears chief executive, a report on the front page of The West on May 8 described Norths as “Sydney’s NRL rejects” and “a dud second division team”.

How the relationship unfolds between the two entities will be a matter of intrigue for some.

However, even at NSW Cup and junior representative level, the pull of the Daniel Dickson-chaired Norths has been very strong over the past 26 years.

The club made a net profit of $46,628 last year, up from a loss of $277,120 in 2023.

The result was aided by a $170,212 increase in revenue, coupled by a reduction in expenses across different levels of the business.

The commitment and dedication in keeping the Norths brand alive by Mr Dickson and former teammate Greg Florimo, another Norths icon, was the reason Mr Moore decided to join Norths’ board in 2021.

“When you use the words ‘quarter of a century’ it frames up how passionate and proud the Bears fans are,” Mr Moore said.

“I always say, you don’t deserve anything in life, you have to earn it.

“It’s what you make and what you take is yours.

“The fact the Bears fans kept getting up off the canvas shows they’ve earnt their right, just like the new part of the family, the WA rugby league family.

“They’ve been getting up off it two years longer, as they were out in 1997 as the Reds.

“So, when you put those two together, the symmetry is such a connector.”