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Mark Duffield • April 18th, 2025 8:52 am
The West Australian this week reported on progress – if there has been any – in talks between the WA Government and the NRL over the possibility of a NRL team in Perth – a team that would almost certainly be a revival of the North Sydney Bears.
There have been talks of a $65 million gap in the proposal put by the WA Government to NRL supremo Peter V'landys. The NRL had initially demanded a $200 million upgrade of the HBF Park rectangular facility and a $120 million entry payment to get into the competition.
The WA Government’s counter offer was a $35 million development payment to grow the code in WA – and the establishment of a centre of excellence – or a high performance centre if you would want to call it that – to be built in Malaga.
The Premier, Roger Cook, had accused V'landys of trying to treat WA taxpayers like a cash cow – which was a statement as obvious as saying the earth is round. V'landys – a bloke who is turning chest-beating into an art form to the point of extending a grovelling invitation to Donald Trump to attend his NRL festival in Las Vegas – appears to think he can set a price, any price for WA to get an NRL team – and that we will just cough the money up.
It would be disappointing in the extreme if the WA Government falls for it. To be clear about where I am coming from here, I would love to see an NRL team in Perth. It would be a welcome and valuable addition to the WA sporting landscape – but at Vlandy’s price? No bloody way.
The NRL should be treating WA as an opportunity to grow the game and to shift the game towards a genuine national footprint which the AFL has and the NRL doesn’t. And I don’t think the AFL is getting this right either. It should be much further advanced in feasibility studies into a third AFL licence in WA – either in the south west or the north west corridor.
West Coast might be weak now but they will be string again at some point and at that point – five years down the track tens of thousands of people will be shut out of AFL footy – our clubs will be too big for the 60,000-seat Optus Stadium. It was clear several years ago that WA was the state best equipped to house a fresh AFL licence and WA was in the year to March 2024 – the fastest growing state in Australia – with a growth rate of 3.1 per cent in population.
We should not be a cash cow for a greedy NRL administration nor should we be an afterthought for a complacent AFL administration. We should be the frontline of the next key battleground for supremacy between the country’s two big football codes and our state government should have that clearly front of mind when they go into talks with either of them.
