St George Illawarra puts locals first in NRLW recruitment turnaround

St George Illawarra’s locally produced stocks were plundered as a result of NRLW expansion - Pamela Whaley reveals how the club reversed the trend.

Two years ago, St George Illawarra were dealing with a mass exodus of top level talent that new Dragons’ NRLW coach Nathan Cross never wants to see happen again.

It happened gradually as the women’s game was growing, but the exit of stars Kezie Apps, Keeley Davis, Emma Tonegato, Shaylee Bent, Jaime Chapman and Holli Wheeler over the past few seasons stripped the NRLW side of Jillaroos representatives and left fans frustrated for the future.

For a club with a catchment reaching into the south coast, Illawarra and up into the St George regions, and a proven track record of producing some of the best talent in the game, watching players leave and star at other NRLW clubs was painful.

Especially locally developed talent.

It’s an issue that Cross, who is also the club’s pathways coaching co-ordinator, identified as soon as he arrived at the Dragons in December.

St George Illawarra pathways coaching co-ordinator Nathan Cross.

“When the job opportunity came up, that was one of the biggest draw cards for me, the nursery and the catchment of young players coming through under your nose,” he said.

“And my background is a lot around development coaching. So for me, that was quite exciting that you’re not going to look outside the four walls too often to recruit.

“It was all nurturing and coaching and developing what was within your pathway already.”

When he first arrived, Cross took a day trip to Gerringong with his wife, and sitting at a cafe with a coffee, it struck them just what a gold mine of talent the club is sitting on.

“The amount of young girls walking around town with the Gerringong Lions polo shirt on, either had been to footy or were going to footy,” he said.

“This area now, there’s a proven track record of producing NRLW players. But you can see it’s starting from a much younger age.”

REBUILDING THE ROSTER

With a stack of rising stars within the pathways system, first priority for Cross and head of female football Sam Bremner was to lock down the local talent they view as franchise players for the Dragons over the next decade.

It’s a crucial time for the likes of 19-year-old halfback Kasey Reh as well as 22-year-old star fullback Tegan Berry and rising centre Indie Bostock, 18, who could be some of the biggest names in the NRLW once the game goes professional in the coming years.

Extending Berry recently was a huge step in the right direction.

‘Flash’ was the biggest name on the NRLW market, but she turned down big offers from glamour clubs Brisbane and Sydney Roosters to re-sign with the Dragons, who are yet to win an NRLW premiership and have missed the finals for the past three seasons.

But the future is bright.

The Illawarra Steelers are in the Tarsha Gale Cup preliminary finals this weekend, with a chance to back up their 2024 premiership led by Reh, Bostock, Charlotte Basham, Ella Koster and Bronte Wilson, who have all graduated to the NRLW squad.

“One of my goals is to have a minimum of 50 per cent of our NRLW team each week from our catchment, and I think that’s fairly realistic,” Cross said.

At the moment that’s around 33 per cent.

But he also has a mission to ensure the four development spots allocated to NRLW rosters are reserved for players from the Dragons pathways.

St George Dragons NRLW players Tegan Berry and Kasey Reh. Picture: Richard Dobson

“I think that sends a really good message, that you will be looked at and rewarded,” he said.

“This is where Sammy and I have been really proactive at the moment around trying to extend Kasey, Ella (Koster), Indie Bostock, all these girls.

“Because we want our team to be full of local girls from Gerringong and Shellharbour and Kiama and Wollongong, and they look at the locals and they go, ‘I want to be her’.”

It gets tougher on the St George side of the catchment area with competition from Cronulla and Wests Tigers, and now new NRLW franchise Canterbury.

In reality, the women’s game is still in its infancy.

And like most NRLW programs, they’re nowhere near as well-funded and well-resourced as their NRL counterparts when it comes to scouting and talent development programs.

That’s an area for growth in the short term.

In the meantime, the plan is to streamline the coaching systems through the women’s pathways, so players can settle into the same structures, values and expectations in every grade.

“We want that uniformity across shapes and structures, terminology, so that when people do progress up the chain, it’s easy,” Cross says.

THE NEXT DECADE

Last season was huge for Reh, who has a rich rugby league bloodline through her dad Greg, a Steelers legend, and uncles Glenn and Brett Stewart.

She captained the Steelers to the Tarsha Gale Cup win, then followed it up with a victory for the under-19s Sky Blues and a player of the match medal, Prime Minister’s XIII and an NRLW debut where she played across the halves, dummy half and from the bench.

She’s viewed by many within the game as a future NSW Origin captain and an important talent for the future of the Dragons.

This year, Cross has given her the keys to the NRLW team which meant letting go of former halfback Tyla King, who has joined Cronulla.

“I want this to be her team. I want her to back herself. She’s a young half. She will make mistakes. But that’s okay,’ he says of Reh.

“I’m prepared to wear that. Coaches live and die by their results.

“But while results are important, we have to create a really good environment and show these girls that they’re valued and we want to back them in long term.

“And if it takes 12 months or two years, I’m okay with that.”

It’s a plan he’s taking with Bostock too, who at 18 was withdrawn from Tarsha Gale Cup this season to build her body in preparation for her debut NRLW season.

The sister of Dragons winger Jack Bostock, Indie has built her physique to withstand the rigours of the step up in physicality, adding nine kilograms of muscle to her small frame.

“She’s a raw talent but she’s got to come in and play centre against Isabelle Kelly and Jess Sergis, so she looks much more physical. She looks like an athlete,” he said.

“But we had to do that because obviously Indie wants to play footy with her mates at Tarsha Gale, but she also wants to make and have a really good NRLW career.

“If we threw her in this year, physically how she looked when I arrived, like she wouldn’t have handled it.

“So that’s, that’s the balancing act.

“We want the Steelers to be successful, but we want these players to have a long career too.

Originally published as St George Illawarra puts locals first in NRLW recruitment turnaround