‘Communist state’: Evil behemoth threatening Bears resurrection

The NRL’s expansion into old territory has already hit a major roadblock with the league’s biggest enemy threatening to end it all.

COMMENT

Barely in to its first trimester, the new Perth Bears licence is already exhibiting the appropriate behaviours of a professional rugby league club.

It’s already had various run-ins with the NRL, plus been tenuously linked to a ton of South African rugby discards and Brad Arthur solely because he bought a house.

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But the clearest indication the new entity already ‘gets’ rugby league? It’s already peeved someone off.

If last week’s front page of The West Australian is any indication, the Bears already have a local rivalry in Perth that’ll make their grudge with Manly seem like soft play.

Reporting on the official reveal of the new franchise under the headline “BAD NEWS BEARS”, the newspaper scolded the successful bid as a “dud second division team” costing taxpayers $65m after “months of secrecy and deception.”

As far as welcomes go, the Bears have knocked on the front door only to get punched through the peep hole.

If this is how Perth’s newspaper reports the end of the city’s 27-year rugby league drought - ie, by complaining it wasn’t long enough — then making inroads in the West for the Bears is gonna be a ball buster.

But why is The West Australian so rankled by the NRL’s newest team?

The WA's front page on the Perth Bears.

The Bears are back … not that the WA media seem to care. Photo: Tom Parrish

Is it a grudge over the Western Reds? Or did Mark Geyer leave a more lasting impact on the city’s nightlife than we give credit for?

Nope, it’s because Perth’s top three favourite sports are AFL, AFL and AFL, a palette they diversify by including their other favourite sport, WAFL.

Yep, Aussie Rules is king in Perth and as popular across the wider state as digging up bauxite.

And as we know, the AFL is broadcast on Channel 7, the station owned by Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media, the company that — you know where this is going — also runs The West Australian.

It doesn’t take a Mensa graduate to see Stokes is laying the slipper in to the Bears to protect the $4.5 billion he jointly tipped in with Foxtel to secure the AFL TV rights.

And in further grim news for the Bears?

The West Australian is the only newspaper in town, meaning it has the power to make or break.

The old enemy is threatening to end it all.

Even in an era when the choice of media has never been greater, The West Australian still packs a solid king-making punch in the West because it’s a captive market that makes the days of two channels in the 70’s look like a veritable smorgasbord.

In fact, the publication has already flexed its muscle this year by successfully campaigning Basil Zempilas in to state parliament by pumping him up so devoutly he almost won a federal seat and Australian Idol too.

For those unaware, Zempilas is the Perth Lord Mayor and local media identity who, in addition to previously fronting Channel 7’s AFL coverage, now chairs enough gigs across enough media platforms that it could even give Eddie McGuire the ick.

As The West Australian flaunts this power over the Bears as Seven’s paramilitary in the code wars, it may come as a shock that two mega entities like the AFL and Seven West would gang up on plucky little rugby league and its modest insurgence.

But in the fair dinkum department, this is standard behaviour for the Aussie Rules industry and its army of compliant ideologues.

That’s why the AFL has been described as the Soviet Union of Australian sports, which has always seemed unjust because the Kremlin would never be that powerful or cold-blooded.

Peter V’landys has his hands full with this new venture. Picture: NewsWire / John Appleyard

So you want to enter my state do you Mr. V’landys? Pic: Colin Murty, The Australian

For this reason its no surprise The West Australian would spout such blatant propaganda, a publication that even in the deepest recesses of summer is happy to feature whatever the Eagles, Dockers, and/or Zempilas did on the weekend and that’s just the front page.

Overall, The West Australian’s unprovoked strike is a chilling indicator of the job ahead of the Bears.

Already the AFL and Seven are punchy over the idea of a poxy lowbrow NRL team breathing the same oxygen as their code in the West, even despite the Dockers being a constant disappointment and the West Coast Eagles a shell of its former glory hunkered by a history of checkered behaviour and a current team that couldn’t kick its way out of a bubble.

Can a fledgling rugby league club survive in an AFL communist state?

Can it thrive against a media empire willing to infinitely reload negative headlines until the infiltrators pack up their weird goalposts and go home?

Bloody oath it can.

Sure, the most draining headaches the Bears have faced in the past has been choking in finals and Jason Taylor getting loose at the cricket, but never a sustained smear campaign bankrolled by the state’s richest man.

But backed by NRL heft and taxpayer dollars, it won’t be left like previous expansion attempts to survive on sunlight and water only.

And if the Bears can survive the day-to-day of their last rivalry — getting jobbed in the scrum by Spud Carroll, surrendering its existence in a takeover etc — the AFL and its minions should be a cinch.

- Dane Eldridge is a warped cynic yearning for the glory days of rugby league, a time when the sponges were magic and the Mondays were mad. He’s never strapped on a boot in his life, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.