Bearer of bad news Why North Sydney will never return to the NRL

October 29, 2021 â€" 9.00am

The Bears are dead. Long live the Bears. Efforts to return the fabled red-and-black jerseys to the NRL are a Cinderella story that should remain in the confines of a fairytale book.

Expansion fever has gripped rugby league since “the Dolphins”, which sounds a bit like “Prince” or “Ronaldo” without any geographical identifier, were given the golden ticket for the next licence.

They will enter the league in 2023 with Wayne Bennett as coach, a fertile recruiting ground and access to an enormous market that has been starved of a second team since the Crushers arrived, then departed, with all the momentum of Garrick Morgan in open space.

They will work. The Bears will not, no matter the sentimental value behind the name or their former greats, of which there is much and many. Almost every rugby league fan had a soft spot for North Sydney - was there anything better than Martin Bella in full flight? - but nostalgia won’t pay the bills in the NRL.

Sydney doesn’t need another team

Let’s start with the obvious. The Harbour City is already a saturated market when it comes to rugby league, to the point where relocation occasionally pops up in the debate about how to ensure the viability of the competition. Like the Dolphins, North Sydney want to be known as “the Bears” in a bid to appeal to a wider audience, although like the Dolphins, everybody knows where the Bears belong, no matter how many games you play in regional NSW.

North Sydney enforcer Billy Moore is driven into the Brookvale turf by Manly’s Des Hasler in 1995.Credit:Steve Christo

Simply saying you will be a “team of the people” doesn’t actually make you a team of the people and the vast majority of football fans didn’t come down in the last shower. Should the Bears make a return, their core market would be current fans of North Sydney, which campaigns as a feeder club to the Roosters. Having a club disappear from the top tier is a bitter pill and many Bears fans simply aren’t invested in the NRL week-to-week.

Sadly, the time for a revival has come and gone.

The NRL wants fresh pastures

The ink had barely dried on the reveal of the NRL’s 17th team when speculation began over its 18th side. That’s a nice even number that avoids the need for a weekly bye and crucially for broadcasters, means more content across the course of a season.

The Bears were quick to put up their hands and remind the game of their ambitions.

“The thing for us is you can’t produce 113 years of history in one or two seasons, that’s what we bring to the game,” Daniel Dickson, the Bears chairman, said. “It’s well supported, it’s a heritage brand and foundation club. The eyeballs will be on the game if the Bears are playing, that’s for sure.”

But if more expansion was to eventuate, areas like Perth, a second team in New Zealand, or even a fifth team in Queensland, somewhere in the vast stretch between Redcliffe and Townsville, would be the focus.

As seen with the 17th team in Brisbane, broadcasters and the NRL are driven by the desire to increase the overall number of eyeballs watching the product. That translates to more broadcast revenue for the game, and another Sydney team won’t achieve that, particularly one right in the middle of Sydney.

Romance aside, the reality is that the North Sydney Bears have a far better chance at a revival by moving across the ditch and becoming the North Auckland Bears.

Sam Walker playing for the North Sydney Bears earlier this year.Credit:NRL Photos

There’s no rush to add an 18th side

Much of the debate about adding the Dolphins was whether there was enough playing depth to cover 16 clubs, let alone an extra at the table. Given the game has just emerged from a season of historic disparity, it will be worth taking a breath and seeing how they fare before hitting the go button again. Granted, a healthy portion of the lopsided scores were at least partly caused by maddening rule changes that were rushed through and had unintended side effects. But if there really aren’t enough players to go around, that part of the garden needs to be tended first.

One-size-fits-all teams never work

Just as the Dolphins have been rightly criticised for watering down their history and heritage to try and have “wider appeal” to some fantasy market of would-be supporters just waiting for the right fish to swim past, the Bears stand to lose everything and gain little if they really did want to return as a semi-baseless entity with home games spread across North Sydney Oval, major stadiums and regional NSW. While she has few rivals as far as pure beauty, North Sydney Oval is not fit-for-purpose as a modern sporting venue these days. It could only be used sparingly, for nostalgia’s sake alone.

And for historic clubs like the Bears, it should be all or nothing if they were to make a return to the big league. Alas, for the famous old club, no matter the faith and history and even financial backing, they are simply based in the wrong place.

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