Paul Kent: How Newcastle Knights have dropped the ball and lost their identity

In every successful era the Knights have had, the team was littered with junior stars nurtured through the ranks. That’s no longer the case and it’s led to a loss of identity, writes Paul Kent.

The confusion at the Knights was on full display in Peter Parr’s press conference on Tuesday, in nothing particularly that Parr said, and only partly that he said nothing.

It was that the Knights went to considerable pain on Monday to release a statement that was as inoffensive as possible, saying virtually nothing really, while, meantime, behind the scenes they were promising that Parr would emerge early on Tuesday for a press conference that would be the club’s line in the sand moment.

He was going to be carrying the big stick, apparently, a call to arms that the current ways were no longer going to be tolerated, that things were going to change.

For a moment, overlook the situation and ask what is going on at the Knights to make them believe these statements equating to nothing is an adequate way to run a multi-million dollar organisation, one that is supposed to operate at the elite end.

The only insight from it all was that the club stands for nothing, treating us all like dolts.

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Knights football boss Peter Parr has plenty of work to do at the club. Picture: Alix Sweeney

The club was “open-minded” about Kalyn Ponga drinking while neurosurgeons had stood him down from playing and training.

They were now at the mercy of the Integrity Unit.

“Just because it is not a good look,” he said at one point, “doesn’t mean straight away that anybody has done anything wrong.”

No sirree.

Another time he said he could not assume what was happening in the toilet cubicle, suggesting that nobody at the club had even thought to ask.

“It doesn’t always go smooth, and sometimes it doesn’t rain, it pours,” he mused, whittling away on his porch.

“We are going through a tough period at the moment,” he said another time, “but almost all of it is self-inflicted.”

Good heavens.

Knights star Kalyn Ponga was asked to leave a toilet cubicle by security.

Parr was employed recently to shake it up at the Knights and the word out of Newcastle is that he has already taken a look under the bonnet and walked away less than impressed with what he saw. Or is that just more misinformation?

If not, when does it start?

And, equally as importantly, where?

Just a day earlier news broke that Zac Hosking had signed a two-year deal with Penrith, reigning premiers and currently streaking the NRL ladder by a clear margin.

The Panthers obviously noticed something of value in Hosking.

After just a few games with the Broncos he had interest from other clubs around the League but the Panthers delivered the attractive offer, and off he goes.

Before emerging at the Broncos, though, some troubled souls will recall that Hosking was remembered as the one working six days a week on a Newcastle construction site after being clearly unwanted at the Knights.

His weekends were spent playing with Central Charlestown.

Zac Hosking, a former Knights junior, will join the Panthers next season. Picture: NRL Photos

Just a few weeks back another Newcastle junior, Jacob Kiraz, scored three tries against the Knights as part of the Canterbury side. It thrilled no one that the majority of his salary was still being paid by Newcastle, where he was unwanted.

Jock Madden was a Newcastle junior, Joe Tapine, Tevita Pangai, Brent Naden and a stack of others on the rise.

Nick Meaney is doing tremendous things at Melbourne, another Knights junior, while it still causes considerable pain in the temporal region when the words of Latrell Mitchell, from some years back, are recalled: “I trialled with the Newcastle Knights, they didn’t want me.”

In their place the Knights have recruited a group of young men who walk the city streets tall and mighty like they own the town when they’ve never even made a down payment.

They’ve won nothing.

And you can include Ponga in that.

Latrell Mitchell trialled with the Knights as a junior.

He has struggled to look anything beyond being mildly interested his whole time at Newcastle, from sucking on a strawberry milkshake while shrugging his shoulders that a coach was just sacked to his unenthused leadership at a club that has just agreed to pay him more than a million dollars a year for five more years.

It was not the crime of drinking or whatever else was happening in that toilet cubicle that is the reason for Newcastle’s failings — you will find similar actions at most clubs, even the successful ones — but the apparent lack of interest in getting better.

And it goes beyond the playing group.

The pillar of their success has always been their junior nursery.

In every successful era the Knights have had the team was littered with junior stars nurtured through the ranks, from Paul Harragon and the Johns brothers, Robbie O’Davis and Mark Sargent through to the likes of Danny Buderus, Kurt Gidley, Jarrod Mullen and Alex McKinnon when the club threatened in 2013.

Kalyn Ponga has a big responsibility at the Knights.

It is simply how it must work for some clubs.

Penrith’s successful eras have also come on the back of local development, in 1991 and 2003 and currently.

Now, many of the Knights’ good young juniors are doing their best work elsewhere.

It brings home the reality that the club has lost its identity.

Either the talent identification stinks or they are not getting enough quality coaching once in grade, and only elsewhere.

If it doesn’t begin to change soon, make that the obituary.

Knights right to be angry at Ponga

Bob McCarthy is 76 and there isn’t a thing he hasn’t seen on the footy field, or the consequence of it.

Just a few weeks back McCarthy was on stage talking about his old teammates and it sounded like roll call at the infirmary.

“You can go through them all, they all got hammered,” McCarthy said.

“The elbow was very loose back then.”

It is hard to explain to the young man, shining with health, that it might not always be that way.

Earlier in this season Cameron Murray, himself a victim of multiple concussions, said he had no plans to change his style, despite the threat to middle age.

In an odd way, though, a drink and a toilet cubicle loom as Newcastle’s unlikely saviour, a sentence that is possible to be written only in rugby league.

It was a bad look for Kalyn Ponga to be out drinking when he cannot play for his club.

News that teammates Kalyn Ponga and Kurt Mann were kicked out of a toilet cubicle together, drinks in hand, is an opportunity not just for the Knights to arrest their worrying slide in discipline but to also help their players realise that the debt for today’s fun will be paid on Tuesday.

McCarthy has watched almost all his teammates go one by one.

Paul Sait and Eric Simms are in a nursing home.

Earlier this year he stood beside Johnny Raper’s bed, the Immortal able to recognise friends and family only every now and then at the end, a lifetime of friendship ending with a sad confusion.

Gary Stevens was a strong intimidating man and how he is stick thin, fighting the fight.

George Piggins is unwell, too. Johnny Sattler another.

“I don’t know whether it comes from the knocks or not,” McCarthy says. “Women get it too …”

(L-R) Ray Hadley, Bob McCarthy and Ron Coote at the state funeral service for Bob "Bozo" Fulton. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

The sensitivity for Ponga is that he is not playing at the moment because a neurosurgeon ordered rest after what was his third concussion this season.

His brain is already in a sensitive state and, the most the Knights can do is begin with their disappointment that he was drinking at the time.

The Knights have the justification to go through the club now and address a thousand small failings that add up to a club sitting 14th on the table with few hopes for improvement.

Ponga, the club captain, is at least partially responsible for driving those standards. Given the money they pay him the club has a right to expect a return on more than just the football field.

Ponga has not played since the Knights got flogged by the Sydney Roosters in round 19.

The concussion appeared mild but it was his third in a season in which he has played just 14 matches.

The game has gone through enormous upheaval since the effects of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) were first discovered in dead NFL players.

The disease is a result of repeated mild brain injuries.

On field concussion assessments are now a weekly occurrence in the NRL, over multiple games.

It has some questioning what the game’s future looks like, particularly as more research brings more understanding.

The progression of the disease makes for depressing reading and, while the disease is still being classified, some early attempts by the likes of renowned neurological expert Ann McKee don’t ease any concerns.

Stage one can be asymptomatic – you can have it without even knowing – or it can see mild depression and memory loss. It could be possible Ponga, at 24, is already suffering stage one CTE.

The concussion he suffered in round 19 looked innocuous, for the layman, and the ongoing headaches he suffered afterward are a sizeable red flag.

That he has had several concussions this season, and it appearing like it took less and less each time for it to occur, were enough for the neurosurgeons to order immediate rest.

Yet Ponga hasn’t respected that.

Stage two sufferers suffer from severe depression and behavioural outbursts.

It’s an outlook that has taken on particular weight in the past week. Mental health is at the front of the conversation around the game at the moment after Paul Green’s tragic death last week.

"David Klemmer got stood down for swearing, a joke... so how are they going to handle this situation [with Kalyn Ponga and Kurt Mann]?"🤔

Woodsy raises an interesting point for the Knights. pic.twitter.com/Fc2EtnNwFR

— Triple M NRL (@TripleM_NRL) August 15, 2022

By stage three, problems are impacting everyday life.

The brain is forgetting basic behaviours and the motor skills are affected.

By stage four, it’s all over.

The sufferer has advanced “language defects, psychotic symptoms, profound cognitive defects and motor features”.

Alcohol and drugs accelerate the disease’s progression.

The Knights have made no comment about the reasons Ponga and Mann were getting chased out of the toilet cubicle by security, but both were carrying alcoholic drinks.

Ponga’s father Andre admitted his son was giving the drinks a nudge, saying he was celebrating a house purchase that morning.

The Knights are angry enough at Ponga drinking, given the delicate state of his brain, which is as far as they can take it now.

And as they figure where to go and their investigation takes them down unknown roads, maybe the most effective solution would be a chat with McCarthy and a talk about the price that gets paid eventually.

Originally published as Paul Kent: How Newcastle Knights have dropped the ball and lost their identity