NRL Finals 2020: How two enemies of the Super League war helped rebuild the Knights
Twenty-five years after the bitter feud that rocked Australian sport and divided the town of Newcastle, two men, who still refuse to be in the same room together, have helped the Knights back to some respectability.
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Two giants of the Super League war can be revealed as instrumental to Newcastle returning to the finals for the first time in seven years.
The extraordinary final chapter in the resurrection of the Knights from earning three consecutive wooden spoons only three years ago to a finals footy team today is layered with devastation, heartache, mass player and coach sackings — and the help of two men who still refuse to be in the same room together.
Twenty-five years after the bitter feud that rocked Australian sport and divided the town of Newcastle, former ARL chief executive John Quayle and the man in charge of Super League, John Ribot, were paramount in securing Knights coach Adam O‘Brien.
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O’Brien will lead the Knights against South Sydney in today’s elimination final at ANZ Stadium just 13 months after replacing Nathan Brown, who severed ties with the club after four painful seasons in August last year.
Knights CEO Philip Gardner said the club’s pursuit of a replacement for Brown began with the aid of Quayle and Ribot — two close confidantes he met while working as Newcastle’s chief financial officer at the height of the Super League war.
“I had John Quayle and John Ribot helping me, who are good friends of mine,” Gardner said.
‘I was very lucky to get both sides of the great (Super League) divide providing advice.
“I keep telling John Ribot and John Quayle they should write a book together. But I don’t think they like sitting in the one room together.
“They talk to each other through me most days. There’s still some animosity.
“Both men are very competitive, but they are very talented and generous.
“When we came to make that decision that Nathan and I felt it was time (to sever ties), we had to go out and find someone fairly quickly.
“We knew, and Nathan knew, that if you’re going to change it, you need to get someone in so they can start the next pre-season.
“God bless Nathan that he did that for us and I’ll always be grateful for him doing that.
“We went to both the Johns.’’
Ribot, the founding father of the Melbourne Storm, used his long-lasting relationships with his former club to profile O’Brien — who had spent 11 seasons as an assistant coach at the Storm before joining the Roosters in 2019 — on behalf of the Knights.
Meanwhile, Quayle phoned his close friend of more than 40-years, Roosters chairman Nick Politis, to understand if O’Brien would be a good fit for the Knights.
“It was about trying to get the best person,” Gardner said.
“And clearly Adam O‘Brien was the best candidate available for us.
“I hadn‘t met (O’Brien) at all. I’d seen what was out there and there’s very few people that I’ve met that could do the head coaching job that we needed done.
“That’s why I relied so heavily on John Quayle and John Ribot to get through the process.
“Everyone that spoke of Adam spoke so highly of him, as did (Roosters coach) Trent Robinson.
“Trent didn’t want to lose him, he was filthy that he was going to go — and they still are — but Robbo, to his credit, he’s a very honest human being.
“And he was honest in talking about Adam and what he’d bring and how good he could be.’’
As the CEO of Wests Group, the owners of the Knights, Gardner took over from former Newcastle chief executive Matt Gidley in 2017.
The Knights rebuild from cellar-dwellers to a top-eight side included a roster overhaul with the hiring and firing of more than 100 players, Gardner said.
“Real credit to Matthew Gidley, he went through that period of time. I couldn‘t have done it,’’ Gardner said.
“To have to run the club through three wooden spoons, to do that week in/week out knowing you’re going to lose and then try to bring everybody back up, that’s what no one externally gets.
“No one understands the impact on the playing group of that.
“What it does, it destroys a culture. Culturally, the club gets burnt to the ground. So you‘ve got to bring it back from its absolute lowest ebb and to do that you need lots and lots of change.
“You’ve got to change the playing roster, the coaching group. I didn’t realise the depth of challenge that was there, particularly around the culture and the psyche.
“Newcastle has always had a good culture. Around the town and the team, but suddenly we had a culture where success was playing first grade. Success wasn‘t even winning.
“Culture in clubs comes from head coaches. So that‘s why it was so important — and no disrespect to Nathan Brown — I had to get the person that was going to be the disciplinarian, who’d be tough and be able to drive that through.
“We got lucky with Adam — he‘s the right person for that, there’s no doubt.’’
Gardner said he recalls vividly the moment he felt the road back was too great for the Knights.
“When Mitchell Pearce ruptured his pectoral during our game at Tamworth (April 2018) and I walked into the sheds after that and everyone knew Mitch was going to be out for a period of time, they were bereft — out of ideas, myself included,‘’ Gardner said.
“That particular time was rock bottom for the club. Because the club was riding entirely on Mitchell’s shoulders.
“So him getting injured … just devastation.
“Clearly you can’t put all your eggs in one basket, it’s too hard. It’s too hard for Mitch as well and it’s probably still an issue.
“I knew there and then that the journey had only just started and we had a lot to do.
“The biggest challenge of any football club is getting a premiership-winning roster. We had a whole lot of players — either too old, too much, too long — and that‘s been the big challenge.
“And that‘s no disrespect to those players. We needed some players at the time, but that damages you somewhere down in your roster.
“So from next year on, we don‘t really have those issues. And now it‘s about building the roster.
“We’ve got the coaching and training staff, we’ll have our new Centre Of Excellence finished by the end of next year.
“The support of the town is commercially very strong. We expect to make a profit, so that will be three years in a row — which has never happened to the Knights before.
“Our focus has been making the eight. From now on, it’s how do we win the premiership?”
Originally published as NRL Finals 2020: How two enemies of the Super League war helped rebuild the Knights