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Mal's pitch to players to join the Bears
Nicholas Quinlan • June 13th, 2025 12:21 pm
Inaugural Perth Bears coach Mal Meninga has spoken about what his pitch to players may look like.
The 13th Immortal was appointed to the role by the NRL last week for a duration of three and a half years which will see him coach until the end of 2028.
As coach, Meninga will have many priorities to contend with to ensure that the side is ready to go for the 2027 season. Chief among them will be to recruit players to join the newly established side.
While Meninga won’t start the role until July, he has noted the need to start developing his sales pitch to players now to ensure that there is no time wasted.
When speaking about what his sales pitch might look like to prospective players, Meninga believes that this will be dependent on which players show interest in joining but would love to talk to all players about what life could be like for them in Perth.
“In the back of your mind, you would like to get everyone,” Meninga said on SENQ Breakfast.
“You would love to obviously be in a conversation with them and communicate with them and hopefully they see some value in going over to Perth.
“The thing about Perth is, what's our sell proposition?
"If I go talk to someone like Kalyn who was born over there, how do I convince him to uproot himself and his family and move over there and participate in the pioneering of the game?
“It’s a great place to live obviously, it’s sunshine, beaches all those sorts of things.
"It’s a great family community over there but what is the value proposition?
"Is it the security of distance? So, all those sorts of things will need to be sorted out first before we can actually start talking to players. But I’d love to talk to all but at this stage, we’re restricted by the salary cap.”
Meninga will be able to start officially recruiting players on November 1st.
Players that will be coming off contract in 2026 that the Bears could go after include the likes of Viliame Kikau, Api Koroisau, James Tedesco, Payne Haas and Harry Grant just to name a few.
