0°C | Saturday October 11, 2025 
The Sydney Roosters will stop using the North Sydney Bears as a feeder club. The move was initiated by the Roosters who want to field their own squad in the NSW Cup, a division below the NRL. In a media statement the Bears said that “We have been notified that the Roosters will be fielding their own team in the 2023 Knock On Effect NSW Cup competition. We maintain our strong relationship with our partner club and the Roosters have confirmed they will continue to honour their contract with the Bears, in regard to NRL player movement between the two clubs.”
Feeder club agreements have been commonplace in rugby league since the formation of the NRL in 1999. For example, the Newtown Jets previously fed their juniors into the Roosters before switching to the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in 2015, and from 2018 to 2019 the Wyong Roos served as the Roosters reserve grade team. Before teaming up with the Roosters, the Bears had fed into New Zealand and Melbourne, and in 2007 signed with Souths, an arrangement which ended in 2018.
The Roosters have always had a small juniors catchment and struggled to field sides in junior comps. The Bears wanted to provide a NRL pathway for their players and additional financial security, and considering their geographical proximity and foundation club ties – it was a no brainer on both sides.
CEO of the North Sydney Bears Gareth Holmes explained “We will still maintain a strong relationship with the Roosters. They have committed to supporting us, our season and our club in the 2023 season as they have done for the last 4 seasons. They will provide players to us and they will also provide opportunities for our players to up and be part of an NRL program at various times in the year.”
NSW Cup coach and Bears legend Jason Taylor added that “Our players need a pathway to the NRL, which remains there with the Roosters for another 12 months.”
“We now more than ever will recruit our own players to ensure we have depth all season, to ensure we have a strong team week in week out. It also means we will develop our own players and we’ve started to do this through the structure of our coaching program through the junior rep teams,” Holmes detailed.
For Taylor, the change does have advantages. “We’re going to need to recruit more players as Bears contracted players. We will be getting less numbers back from the Roosters which isn’t perfect, but there are positives that come along with that having more of our players playing on Saturday or Sunday, training with us throughout the week.” This indicates that the club does not have immediate plans to partner up with another NRL club, however this may change over the next 12 months. For now they will need to construct a stand alone squad.
In February, the Sun reported on the growth of junior rugby league on the North Shore. This has seen the club’s player numbers boosted by 56% in the last decade, with 1,600 juniors this last season. Notably, Norths have been expanding their junior club partnership with clubs like Asquith Magpies as well as Hills Bulls who previously fed into Parramatta. The Bulls recently won the Ron Massey Cup, the rugby league third division. Taylor is optimistic, as “it also will give more opportunity and bolster our relationship with the Hills Bulls for guys coming up into our squad.”
A key question for Bears fans will be how this affects the club’s NRL bid. The club was recently linked to a Perth NRL bid, potentially combining their pushes for inclusion as the 18th NRL club. Following these revelations it was then revealed that the club has $15 million in potential sponsorship money ready to go. Chairman Daniel Dickson told the SMH that “it still stays at the forefront of our mind that we want to make sure this bid is not only financially viable but viable for the Bears followers and to have the recipe for what is going to be a successful 18th team”, adding “that includes the rugby league community, grassroots and development pathways which we feel we will deliver to the game in spades.” In parting ways with the Roosters, these pathways will have to evolve to provide a strong base for any potential NRL squad. Off the field the club is experiencing good results with membership up 133% from last season, 15,000 fans total attending Bear Park all year and $300,000 in merchandise sold. This puts the club on decent footing to make up for the extra costs associated with the split from the Roosters, such as player contracts and sponsorship deals.