NRL 2022: How Kalyn Ponga and his father, Andre, negotiated one of the richest deals in league history
Kalyn Ponga has the father of all new deals with Newcastle but it’s been a process not without controversy. Brent Read breaks through the rumours and innuendo to reveal the full story.
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Father and son take a seat opposite each other in the boardroom at Newcastle’s freshly minted Centre of Excellence.
Half-empty bottles of water are spread across the table.
In typical rugby league fashion, a plate of party pies is on hand. Right beside the bowl of tomato sauce.
Andre and Kalyn Ponga are alone in a room that only an hour ago was filled with media and Knights officials for a press conference that has just come to an end.
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There’s an old adage that the Australian cricket captain is the most important person in the country after the Prime Minister. Not here. Not in a town as immersed in rugby league as Newcastle.
In Newcastle, the biggest star at the Knights sits at the right hand of the PM.
Right now, that man is Kalyn Ponga, the prodigiously gifted 24-year-old who this week signed a five-year deal that is expected to soar north of $6 million when the salary cap is set from 2023 onwards.
Ponga is the face of the Knights. He is one of the highest-paid players in the sport and while that brings with it adulation, it also attracts its share of vitriol.
The vast majority of Newcastle rejoiced at his decision to pledge his future to the Knights, but there are some who would have you believe Ponga and his family wield too much power at the club.
HOLDING TO RANSOM
They were accused of holding the Knights to ransom in the lead-up to Wednesday’s announcement as father and son – agent and rugby league superstar – kept everyone guessing over their plans for next season.
“I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how to address that,” an incredulous Kalyn Ponga replies in response to the accusation.
“It would be interesting where they get that from, how you can come up with that?”
They got it from the pages of this newspaper. Over the course of several days earlier this week, News Corp reported the Knights were so frustrated with Andre’s behaviour that they pulled their contract extension off the table.
It was said that the deal was only put back on the table after Andre issued a grovelling apology to key Newcastle officials.
“Did you?” Ponga asks his father incredulously. “I know you didn’t.”
It says much that Kalyn even felt for a second that he had to ask the question. Ponga is smart and savvy but he also has implicit trust in his father.
He didn’t seek regular updates on the progress of talks. He had no interest in the minutiae of negotiations. He didn’t want a blow-by-blow description of discussions with the club.
He hasn’t had an agent for years.
He had one for a time but came to the decision that he was best served with his father at his side. On the face of it, Andre seems underqualified for the role.
He doesn’t own a tertiary qualification. He has spent much of his life working in the mines. He occasionally minces the English language.
He doesn’t strike you as the type to negotiate a multi-million dollar contract that will make his son one of the highest earners in rugby league history.
OVERSTEPPING BOUNDS
To the uninitiated, it appears like a father overstepping his bounds. There have been unflattering comparisons with the likes of Damir Dokic and Richard Williams.
Andre does, however, have one significant quality that makes him eminently qualified for the role: he loves his son.
“Why should you have a manager?” Ponga says.
“I am fortunate enough that when it comes to my dad, he wants what is best for me. That would be exactly what I want for my son. That is what my dad wants for me.
“The way we have gone about things has worked for 24 years. I am not going to start listening to the opinion of people I don’t know.
“I have always said I am very lucky that dad doesn’t tell me everything. He probably knows a lot more than I know of what is going on around me.
“He tells me what, I guess, I need to know – good and bad. That is the beauty of him being in the position he is. If he was a manager or I had a manager, it could be different in that sense.
“I had faith and trust in the club and dad that things were happening behind the scenes. It has always worked for us. Dad’s best interest is me.
“There is nothing he really gets out of it.”
Andre adds: “I think was important to see how (having a manager) worked. Then that made us realise you don’t need a manager.
“I don’t have to do anything. People come to me. You filter what is good advice and what is not.
“The outside influences don’t really align with what we have done. I am not saying that person (his former manager) was a bad person. He wasn’t – he was a good man.
“At the end of the day, there are certain values we hold in our family to make sure things are done right.”
And that has been one of the issues this week. Whether one of the most lucrative deals in a proud club’s history was done right.
DEAL NOT OFF TABLE
The Pongas deny that negotiations with the Knights were problematic. They insist the deal was never taken off the table and no apologies were necessary.
In fact, they say a handshake agreement was struck more than a week ago.
“Last week we all knew that he was staying but we had to go through that process,” Andre says.
“We knew last week that this was going to happen. If it doesn’t come from us or from the club itself to us, it is noise.”
As for the suggestion he wields too much power, Andre points to his involvement with Newcastle’s women’s team and suggests his only interest is in what is best for his son and the club.
“The last four months, I have literally spent four months away from family and had 26 daughters,” Andre says.
“Even using our own finances. That was more about we can help him be successful in this club. The conversations were about what can the family do to help the club be successful.”
Success, Ponga says, was at the heart of his decision to stay in Newcastle.
He was wined and dined by Wayne Bennett at a meeting on the NSW Central Coast, the Dolphins coach using the penthouse at the Star of the Sea resort to try to entice Ponga to return to Queensland and be part of the fledgling franchise.
Bennett challenged him on what he wanted from his career and whether he could achieve it in Newcastle. Sources told News Corp that in the meeting, Ponga asked Bennett how he could make him a better player.
Ponga, it is said, wasn’t overly inspired by the response. He walked out of the meeting convinced his future was at the Knights.
Some have taken the view that he chose the soft option. They say he can cruise in Newcastle because there he is in his comfort zone. Ponga bristles.
“Nothing is given in rugby league,” he says.
“If I go out there and think I don’t have to work hard ... that is the first sign of someone getting ahead of themselves and I have lost that humble nature.
“I think people saying that they are suggesting we can do what we want. Rugby league doesn’t work like that. In rugby league you have to work hard.
“I want to win. I want to commit each week and day to that.”
HUMBLED AND HONOURED
Ponga informed his teammates of his decision on Wednesday morning, moments before he announced it to the rugby league world.
He told them he was humbled and honoured to be staying. He thanked them for leaving him alone as the negotiations were splashed across the pages of the papers.
He told them he believed in the club and them. He made a commitment to them that he would work hard to bring premierships back to Newcastle.
He had already made a commitment to himself. He may paint a relaxed picture on the outside but on the inside, he insists the fire burns.
That applies, he says, on the football field or the golf course – he is a former New Zealand junior champion and recently dusted off his clubs.
He is already playing off a handicap of eight but is far from satisfied. Not with his golf, and certainly not with his rugby league.
“Ever since I was young, I have wanted to be the best,” he says.
“I have picked up a golf stick or kicked a soccer ball, or thrown a footy to be the best. I just want to be the best. It is definitely why I play rugby league – to be the best.
“The culture here is that we definitely want to win. Belief is a big thing. That is something I want to bring.”
Reputations linger long after the money runs out
- Paul Kent
After several minutes of exhausting research this week it quickly became clear that, to discover what was really said in that hotel room between Wayne Bennett and Kalyn Ponga, it required the kind of figure who gets around with a press card in the brim of his hat, the kind born with a pencil behind his ear with a dedicated habit of keeping his ear to the ground.
Unfortunately such a figure could not be located here. It gives you a dirty ear, for one.
What was established, though, after a quick glance over the press pages, is that Bennett delivered a few home truths to Ponga and Ponga didn’t like it. He wasn’t used to the adjectives coming at him and figured he could earn the same money elsewhere, for half the grief.
Ponga has revealed this week that the moment he knew he was going to re-sign with Newcastle was the moment he walked out of that meeting with Bennett two weeks ago.
The meeting was one of those of the top secret variety, held at Terrigal’s Star of the Sea over hamburgers ordered in by Bennett and, presumably, strawberry milkshakes, because both men agreed they did not want to be spotted conversing in public.
There once was a time when it wouldn’t have taken much sleuthing at all to discover what actually was said in the meeting that left Ponga so resolute he didn’t want to be a Dolphin.
Those were in simpler times, though, when the game had a kind of country honesty about it, and when, in what seems an anomaly today, an honest question often brought forth an honest response.
Nowadays, if you don’t get a retort hot enough to make a miner blush, the chances of the answer bearing any resemblance to the actual truth are 25s and drifting.
The trick is to chip around the edges, where it can be revealed the heat in the conversation came when Bennett questioned Ponga on the kind of footballer he wanted to be.
Did he want to continue coasting as the big dog in town, the undisputed superstar in Newcastle but still without a genuine run at a premiership, or did he want to squeeze all he could out of that considerable talent and achieve something more permanent?
It was a subtle dig at Ponga and a solid dig at the Knights. Seems that years after sacking himself at the club, Bennett is still causing them pain.
Ponga said this week that he believed in the “vision” at Newcastle and believes the club is on the right course to deliver that premiership by the end of his career.
It is a big decision.
Indeed, the choice to stay loyal to a club and the money they offer, or switch and take the chance, can make for career-defining decisions.
Books have been written about those such men, the likes of Johnny Raper, who left Newtown as a teenager to join the Dragons and went on to become an Immortal. Could he have become an Immortal without playing at the Dragons?
The case for the prosecution says none have been written about those who got it wrong.
How will Ponga’s career be measured if he cannot deliver the Knights a premiership?
It is not just a head scratch for Ponga.
Josh Addo-Carr left Wests Tigers, a good decision, and became one of the game’s genuine superstars, as they like to say. So popular, the kids loved him.
Addo-Carr brought something to the game only a handful possess, blistering speed that stood him out from others, and caused the crowds to find their feet. He was on the way to becoming one of the game’s greatest-ever wingers.
This season Addo-Carr left the Storm to play for Canterbury, who among their troubles can’t seem to find a way to give him ball in space, and so suddenly the long runs have dried up. If it doesn’t change soon, Addo-Carr might more be remembered as simply one of those players who had a few good years.
As it stands, parked on the end of the Canterbury backline, most of his metres coming from dummy-half scoots, he reminds you of the guy driving his Ferrari in city traffic.
Reputation lingers long after the money is gone.
Aaron Woods was on his way to becoming a cult hero at Wests Tigers, one so beloved he could live on the club’s goodwill for years after his playing career ended.
Then Woods got caught in the battle between then-Tigers coach Ivan Cleary, who put a deadline on the contract offer, and his own manager, Isaac Moses, who also managed James Tedesco, Mitch Moses and Luke Brooks and who, on behalf of them all, took offence at the deadline.
It might have been a better financial deal for Woods to move to Canterbury but he played just 14 games before the club moved him on midway through the season.
In the meantime, the move ended his Origin career at 14-straight games.
Sometimes, money is not the most important aspect.
To pluck a name from the files, for instance, Mark McGaw, like Woods, played outside Andrew Ettingshausen at Cronulla and, with it, also for NSW and Australia.
Then McGaw took the big bucks at Penrith in what created massive news. It lasted a season before he disappeared down the drain hole in his final two seasons at South Sydney.
Ettingshausen remains a club legend, McGaw someone who played there.
That Bennett spoke so tough to Ponga suggests he went in with nothing to lose.
The Dolphins were interested in Ponga but the streetcorner tip was that their preferred choice in the market was Cameron Munster to play five-eighth with Reece Walsh at fullback, which they believed they could get for not much more than paying for Ponga alone.
So Bennett had nothing to lose, and tested where Ponga was at.
Ponga’s head was in Newcastle.
The Knights could also be asking why they put the deposit down.
If Bennett, a seven-time premiership winning coach, was laying out the demands for what it took to win a premiership, and Ponga didn’t find those palatable, then what are the Knights paying top dollar for?
It takes more than a snapbrim hat to learn the truth of that.
Why this latest US venture is different
Manly boss Scott Penn spoke like an innocent to the game this week with the pitch to sell rugby league in America.
Penn spoke of how he has shown Americans footage of NRL games and they were all blown away, or somesuch, by the fact they played a tough physical contact game with no pads and no helmets, like happens in the NFL.
Excuse us if we say, we have heard it all before.
There was a time when Ian Roberts was promised he would be a household name in China, and not just for playing a thug in Superman Returns.
That was the Super League pitch.
For those of a little more … mature age, we can also recall the infamous fourth State of Origin game being taken to Los Angeles in 1987, which still causes the average Queenslander to burn with white hot rage when they are reminded that that year’s series was drawn 2-2.
That was going to be the launch of rugby league in America for very much the same reasons Penn offered this week, 35 years later.
Namely, Americans were wowed by the fact Our Gladiators played without the aid of helmets and shoulder pads.
How well did the game do since then?
At best, it provides late night filler on the sports channels.
This time, the motive is different.
ARL Commissioner Peter V’landys made the unusual confession this week that the NRL had “pretty much” exhausted its revenue streams in Australia and needed new markets.
From this side of the road, it appears the pitch has nothing to do with drawing a viewing audience, but a betting audience, which would then require US Governments to pay betting taxes to the NRL.
When it comes to gambling revenue, V’landys has shown he is the best at making governments pay for their pound of flesh.
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Originally published as NRL 2022: How Kalyn Ponga and his father, Andre, negotiated one of the richest deals in league history
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