• 2024 SEASON LAUNCH

    Knock-On Effect NSW Cup

In the final days of summer on a beautiful warm night at The Greens North Sydney, we brought together our corporate partners, sponsors, members, staff and senior playing group to celebrate the launch of the North Sydney Bears 2024 Knock-On Effect NSW Cup season. Guests sipped on chilled Bear Park Brews and Grizzly Gin-gers, featuring our very own Bear Park Gin, consumed delicious morsels of bao buns, sliders, arancini balls and gourmet sausage rolls and reveled in the feeling that only the anticipation of a new season brings. With one week until comp kick off to go, pre-season is almost done, trial games successfully completed and now the big job of tackling the next 26 rounds begins.

Our CEO, Gareth Holmes, and Chairman, Daniel Dickson, commenced formalities, updated the audience on the club’s activities and officially opened the season. We followed with a Q&A session with our Head Coach Pat Weisner, Assistant Coach Joel Scrivener and Assistant Storm Coach Todd Lowrie lead by our very own legend Greg Florimo. Weisner took us through how the team has been building through the pre-season, the early taste of success in the main two trial games and changes to the style of footy our boys will be playing this season. Scrivener welcomed us into his world of stats and how they are being applied to produce better results from individual players and the team as a whole. Lowrie spoke openly about the positive relationship the Storm and the Bears now have and they are looking forward to s strong season ahead, backed by the Bears.

After a break in formalities, Weisner returned to introduce his 2024 Leadership team (see more below) and brought up on stage one-by-one the 2024 Knock-On Effect NSW Cup team. Only two players were missing on the night, Phillip Makatoa and Havi Tupouniua, who are respectively recovering from surgery and injury. Florimo lead the players Q&A section with Team Captain Kurt De Luis, Co-Vice Captain Jake Toby, Club Captain/Player Mentor Jerry Key and Melbourne Storm Pathway Player Keagan Russell-Smith. De Luis spoke openly about the pain of coming within 5 minutes of the premiership in 2023 and the hunger the team feels to get the job done this season. Key explained the reasoning behind the team’s word of choice for the year, Relentless, and what that means to the group. As Key stated, it means to never stop, never give up, never be content with where the team is at because there is always room for improvement. Looking at his team, Key spoke with passion “we’ve got 80 minutes to play, be prepared to play 90 and do it with all you’ve got”.

Introducing our 2024 Knock-On Effect NSW Cup Team:

Allan Fitzgibbon
Ben Stevanovic (Co-Vice Captain)
Ben Talty (Leadership Group)
Bobby Miller
Che Te Rangi
Christian Maanaima
Daniel Ala
Harradyn Wilson
Havi Tupouniua
Isreal Ogden
Jack Boyling
Jake Toby (Co-Vice Captain)
Jerry Key (Club Captain/Player Mentor)

Josh Bergamin
Josh Bevan
JP White
Kieran Hayman
Kurt De Luis (Team Captain)
Logan Aldridge
Luke Hodge
Mason McCarthy
Matt Stimson
Michael Fenn
Moung Dut
Nathaniel Roache (Leadership Group)
Phillip Makatoa

Phillip Makatoa
Regan Hughes
Riley Meyn
Rua Ngatikaura
Sean Garner
Sean Sabutey
Sean Vaivaleta
Shalom O’Ofou
Simon Tito
Sunia Naruma
Trey Peni
Tui Katoa

More images from the event. Please see our social pages for videos from the night: