NRL 2023: Blake Cannavo, the mystery man running the Newcastle Knights behind the scenes
He is the mysterious bloke who quietly takes a seat in the players’ enclosure, moves about the dressing room and celebrates as hard and often as any of the Knights players.
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At the Newcastle Knights rugby league club, Blake Cannavo is the man you see but don’t know.
He is the mysterious bloke who quietly takes a seat in the players’ enclosure at games, moves about the dressing room before and after matches, and celebrates as hard and often as any of the Knights players.
He has an all-access lanyard around his neck up but you won’t find his name on the Knights’ website or on the NRL register of club officials.
He has power and influence at Newcastle — just no official job title.
If there were to be a title, it would be that he is the “eyes and ears” for the club’s media-shy CEO Philip Gardner.
What is most surprising about Cannavo is that he operates in a working capacity that is unlike any other figure at any other NRL club. He sits in management meetings, is a former third-party sponsor of star player Kalyn Ponga and chases player agents for new recruits.
Cannavo is equal parts charming and mysterious.
He’s worked for some of the country’s most affluent and high-powered business people in Twiggy Forrest and Gina Reinhart.
He played rugby league and the major game of note on his resume was with Super League club Widnes more than 20 years ago.
He initially won over his teammates with the way he conducted himself off the field as opposed to on it. He was the life of the party. Generous to a fault.
Cannavo’s lone appearance was against Bradford and he was gone by the end of the season.
When his rugby league career came to an end, Cannavo found himself mixing in lofty circles.
Cannavo found favour with people in positions of power.
Gardner is now among them. The pair met when Cannavo was watching his son play in the lower grades at Newcastle back in 2018 and now he’s as significant as general manager of football Peter Parr, who was employed to look after the football business while Gardner runs the affluent Wests Newcastle Leagues Club.
So close is their relationship, the Knights players have dubbed him “Phil’s hand bag.’’
Confused player agents have taken to calling journalists to ask for details of the person who seems to be pulling many of the strings.
Most recently, he’s been linked to meetings with former Gold Coast Titans coach Justin Holbrook as well as behind a request to meet with Dragons half Jayden Sullivan.
Cannavo seemingly played down his role when approached by The Sunday Telegraph.
“I’m in an advisory role,’’ Cannavo said.
“I’m more focused on the pathways of the club. I also assist Peter by being someone to bounce things off.’’
LIFE OF THE PARTY
Cannavo’s arrival to the English Super League club to start training with Widnes has the makings of a Netflix series.
Widnes players still laugh today as they tell what they claim to be, either one of the most extraordinary rugby league stories ever – or as Cannavo calls it “complete BS.”
The legend goes that Cannavo won a top-tier contract in the English Super League by sending footage of himself playing in Australia to the Widnes coaching staff. Players laugh that the skills shown on the video didn’t match real-life but Cannavo says he scored his place on the team after he turned up unannounced back in 2002 and asked for a chance to play in a pre-season trial match.
“(Coach) Neil (Kelly) would have told you that I trialled against Warrington in the Boxing Day trial,” Cannavo said.
Regardless of how he arrived at Widnes, it didn’t take long for his teammates to realise he wasn’t up to Super League. He trained like a demon, but game day was a different story.
Former teammates suggested Cannavo had an array of different war stories and spoke of his relationships with former Test and Roosters stars Brad Fittler and Bryan Fletcher.
“He sort of came out of the blue,” one former teammate said.
“He was a mystery guy the way he came into it.
“He always had that gift of the gab. He was a likeable character. He was good to have around. When it came to fitness and training, he was no slouch.
“He was one of those characters that comes around once in every 100 years.”
Fun, the life of the party and beyond generous, Cannavo was everything a footy club dressing room needs. The ultimate team-man, he won his teammates over by shouting boozy nights out, the best seats behind the roped-off section of Liverpool’s hottest nightclubs and rounds of golf at the most beautiful golf courses in Lancashire.
“To have a successful team you’ve got to be successful off the pitch as well in terms of relationships and social side of the club and certainly we had a good social side, without it going over the top, and Blake contributed towards that,’’ Kelly told The Sunday Telegraph.
The records of Rugby League Project show Cannavo’s name listed just once on the Widnes team sheet; a March 1, 2002 clash with Bradford.
Cannavo was named on the interchange bench. He would never be used by coach Kelly again. His former teammates and Widnes fans have suggested that it was one game too many.
“We all used to laugh about Blakey,” another former teammate said.
“He trained the house down. He would be the first in everything. He was the king of the social club. He was popular, he was a lot of fun. He wasn’t hurting anyone.
“He wasn’t in the team. We had a good season that year. It was all positive. He wasn’t hurting our football.”
In 2011, RLFANS.COM asked fans to rate your team’s worst ever foreign player.
“Got to be Blake Cannavo in 2002,’’ one unkind fan wrote.
Off the field, teammates claimed Cannavo would sometimes ask to borrow money and sold the dream of different money-making ventures.
A couple of teammates were on the verge of handing over savings, before a family member talked them out of it.
Cannavo said the stories are “absolute rubbish”.
“Never have I borrowed money from any one of my teammates and I would sign a stat-dec to prove it,’’ Cannavo said.
“I bet those making up this BS wouldn’t do the same.’’
Driving a BMW to training and letting his teammates drive the expensive car, Cannavo’s teammates thought he was wealthy.
Kelly said if the claims were true he would’ve known.
“I’d have to say that never reached me. I wouldn’t comment either way on that, because I don’t know anything,’’ Kelly said.
THE BUSINESSMAN
Cannavo now appears to be a wealthy man but if there were any money issues, they began well before he turned up in England in 2002.
A federal court search reveals that Cannavo was involved in bankruptcy proceedings dating from 1998. Court records show two proceedings, one of them involving Active Hire Group Pty Ltd, were annulled and the debts settled.
Cannavo insists he has paid back every cent he ever owed.
The federal court search also reveals that there were further proceedings in 2007 and 2008, including a claim by Behrmann Bookmaking Pty Limited.
Again, Cannavo said he paid back every cent.
“It is public knowledge that they were annulled,” Cannavo said.
“Contrary to other people, I paid every cent to every person and that is stated in the records.”
In February of 2010, his name was raised in a sitting of the legislative assembly by the member for the seat of Port Macquarie Peter Besseling when talking about payments for building subcontractors and suppliers and a history of unresolved debt”.
“The people involved often are well known to most locals within the local building and construction industry and include … Blake Cannavo,” he said.
Remarkably, Cannavo’s resume shows how rapidly he climbed the corporate mining ladder. In a matter of months after his name was raised in the legislative assembly, he landed a job as the project director of Twiggy Forrest’s Solomon Mine in Western Australia.
An article in The West Australian from July 2011 revealed that Forrest rejigged the leadership of his Solomon mine to hand the reins to Cannavo and Anthony Kirk.
Midway through the next year, Nine newspapers ran a photo of Cannavo and Forrest together.
“I was the project director on Solomon hub – that was one of the biggest iron ore mines built in the west,” Cannavo said of his time with Forrest.
“It was one of the most successful projects ever built in the west. We probably changed how things were built. “To this day it is still probably the most successful project built in the west.”
After two years with Fortescue Metals Group, Cannavo spent seven months as general manager of iron ore at Aquila Resources before he landed a job as project director of Rinehart’s flagship Roy Hill Project in 2013.
He lasted eight months but left before the project was completed in 2015 – it went on to become a gold mine for Rinehart.
Last year alone the Roy Hill project made a $3.2 billion profit for Australia’s richest woman.
Cannavo chose his own path. He established Bamford Engineering and Consulting in 2012 and then became chief executive officer of Native Mineral Resources in 2019, a position he holds to this day.
Cannavo is the managing director as well as the chief executive, holding more than 70,000,000 shares in the company through his family trust BOC Holdings. A few years ago, that would have represented a mountain of money. At the time, the share price was 54 cents. As of Friday, it was three cents and falling.
The Native Mineral Resources board includes Knights boss Gardner, who is also a sizeable shareholder in the company.
“Phil is a wonderful person and he is a person who does a lot for a lot of people,” Cannavo said.
“I know he cops a lot but if it wasn’t for Phil, that club (Newcastle Knights) wouldn’t be there.”
THE KNIGHTS
Newcastle are in the midst of a late-season surge to the finals and Cannavo has had a front-row seat.
He insists his only desire is to see the Knights finish in the top eight and play in the postseason.
“When you are from country towns – and I have been in Port (Macquarie) for a long, long time – a side like Newcastle is critical to the town,” Cannavo said.
“To see the success come to the town is something that has been long-awaited. Anything I could do to help the Knights be successful, that is what I have done.
“There are times I will travel up and down that highway – it might take me 4.5 hours – I travel up and down for meetings and sometimes there are two or three a week.”
The club’s late run of results has eased pressure on coach Adam O’Brien and Cannavo says he would be stunned if he wasn’t in charge next season.
“In my eyes, Adam is contracted for 2024 and he will be there,” he said.
As for the intrigue that surrounds his elevation into a position of influence at an NRL club, Cannavo says he understands.
He mightn’t like it, but he can see why there might be interest in the man who has enough say at the Knights to question the recruitment of a certain player, and potentially coaching staff.
“I completely understand the intrigue and hopefully through the actions and hard work of what we are doing, it is something that works,” he said.
“I think with what we have done to date, it is working.”
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Originally published as NRL 2023: Blake Cannavo, the mystery man running the Newcastle Knights behind the scenes
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