Eleven months away from their NRL debut, the Perth Bears are establishing their junior pathways.
Hundreds of hours hunched over match footage, knocking on parents doors and turning up at junior clubs across Western Australia has yielded the first fruits: 20 of the state's most promising young players, hand-picked for the Bears' inaugural Bear Tracks academy.
These are kids who, not long ago, may have slipped through the cracks by being lured to rival codes, rival clubs, or simply a lack of anything worth staying for.
Now, there's a road that leads somewhere.
The timeline of six years hopes to establish and then stabilise the Western Australian talent coming through the ranks and chase a dream instead of betting on a chance in Sydney or Brisbane.
Last week, the Perth Bears unveiled Bear Tracks, the beginning of a more than half-decade blueprint to cultivate homegrown NRL talent by 2031.
The cohort of the 20 players are aged between 14 and 17, representing some of the finest young athletes in WA.
They'll be pushed, tested and shaped into footballers capable of fronting an SG Ball competition in 2029, Harold Matthews in 2030, and stepping into NRL environments by 2031.
In an interview with CODE Sports, Head of Pathways Ian Millward, working alongside head coach Mal Meninga and assistant coach Ben Gardiner spoke on the deliberate decision to target this precise age group.
"By 2029, you would expect there'd be a couple of really good players out of that, say there's two or three local boys," Millward says.
"So then you'd be looking at their next advancement after under-19s, which would be an NRL training contract.
"An NRL training contract would then take them to 2030. I reckon we'd like to be starting to see something in 31.
"One of the biggest things for us is whenever a Perth boy relocated with their family to Queensland, they were still behind the Queensland boys who were playing Cyril Connell or Mal Meninga Cup, so they still didn't make it.
"We've already had a couple of families that have moved back wanting to try to start with Perth Bears. I was shocked when I got the job how many families actually had migrated under that one proviso."
According to NRLWA chief executive John Sackson, Western Australia loses roughly 20 players per year to eastern states, with talented kids and their families uprooting their lives in pursuit of a pathway that didn't exist at home.
The AFL has a strong presence, with the West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers making the calculus harder.
Without a clear route to the NRL, families faced an uncomfortable decision of switching codes or to move.
"On average every year, particularly in the last five-plus years, maybe even a few more, we've been losing around 20 kids or young players under the age of 20 that have packed up and left Perth to various points on the east coast," Sackson says.
"Be it Sydney, be it Brisbane, be it rugby league schools in southeast Queensland or in Sydney, with the backing of their parents.
"These are the more talented kids to pursue rugby league careers by going to rugby league academies at various clubs or going to the schools that have amazing rugby league programs."
WA has quietly produced some of the game's elite players with Knights captain Kalyn Ponga, Wests Tigers forward Royce Hunt, and NRLW star Kennedy Cherrington.
"It's a great motivation for these young players," he says.
"Eventually, we'll be moving into the women's game as well because we produce quite a number of female players in the NRLW and have played for both Australia and New Zealand, who played all their junior rugby league in Perth.
"We look forward to the day that the Bears establish themselves and the foundation is strong."
For Millward, the sales pitch convincing teenagers to stay in Perth is constant, his daily grind, and with the PNG Chiefs entry in the NRL in 2028, there's more competition
"If you look at the first year, you would think a high percentage will come out of WA, but in three years' time you would expect too that we've convinced some families that it's a great place to go and live and to start schooling," Millward says.
"It's a real attraction for families to recruit, not just the player.
"That's going to be really important to us."
Bear Tracks launched in Perth but its reach won't stop there.
Brisbane's East and North Sydney are the next fronts in the talent hunt, with academy games between all three hubs planned for next year.
Closer to home, the Bears are investing heavily in lifting the standard of local first-grade competition, both to deepen their recruitment pool and to give Meninga a reserve of bodies to call on come 2027.
"We wanted to dive in really deep, right away," Millward says.
"First of all, we think we have a responsibility to improve the standard of competitions in WA.
"Secondly, we want to improve the standard of the open competition because, if the head coach wants to play some players or there's an outstanding 18- or 19-year-old, he can play in the local comp.
"We want to work really closely with NRLWA. We haven't finalised everything yet but we want to constantly keep talking about how we can do this together."
The four coaches chosen to bring Bear Tracks to life were selected with both sklll development and community connection in mind.
Kieran Liss from Rockingham School, which runs a rugby league curriculum.
Martin Collis, an experienced under-17s schoolboys coach.
Jhai Kapea, who coaches locally with the Alkimos Tigers, bringing a Polynesian cultural connection, and Kailey Thompson, a female coach earmarked for eventual integration into the club's NRLW program.
The 20 players selected from clubs including Willagee Bears, Kwinana Titans, Ellenbrook Rabbitohs, Kalamunda Bulldogs, Alkimos Tigers and Rockingham Sharks will begin with a two-week program, supported by regular check-ins throughout the year before a demanding four-month intensive block in November.
