Andrew Johns gives Kalyn Ponga blessing to leave, real problem at Knights ‘rats nest’

Andrew Johns has weighed in on Kalyn Ponga’s uncertain future as the Newcastle Knights lurch from one disaster to another.

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Decades in the rugby league wilderness have seen Knights fans acclimatise to spending the majority of their seasons crying in the bathtub.

But for a club that lives with a gentle hum of peril in its ear even at the best of times, 2025 has been a season that has surpassed most by sinking beyond the gurgler and down in to the stink.

Not only is Newcastle moored at the foot of the table with an attack backfiring on all cylinders, rumours are now circling that Kalyn Ponga’s mooted release to rugby and Adam O’Brien’s uncertain future as coach are both about to receive the dreaded full support of the board.

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Andrew Johns has given his blessing for Ponga to leave the Knights — either to join another NRL club, play rugby union or sign up to the breakaway R360 league — insisting he would say “thank you” to Ponga for his service.

“I give him a big thank you for coming to the club and if he wants to move on, I say thank you for what you have done for the club,” Johns told the Freddie and the Eighth podcast.

“He has carried the club. He signed after the three wooden spoons in a row and that year, the Cowboys got to a grand final.

“Look, he got signed for big money but struggling clubs have to pay overs for a marquee player.

Andrew Johns has given Kalyn Ponga his blessing to leave the Knights.

“He has attracted players to the club, he has attracted sponsors, I would imagine his social media reach would be huge.

“So I would say thank you to Kalyn for what you have delivered to the club. Thank you very much. If you want to move on, so be it.

“No animosity whatsoever.”

But with everyone rubbernecking at McDonald Jones Stadium as it burns, one factor has been conveniently lost like a red-headed middle child in a shopping mall.

When Dylan Brown was announced in April as Newcastle’s new signing for 2026, the club couldn’t have dreamt of the impact his signing would immediately make.

That’s because everything at Newcastle has gone so belly-up since he agreed to terms that the only explanation is he signed the deal in puppies blood with a dodo feather.

Not only has the club gone in reverse on the paddock as it suffers a calamitous injury toll, it’s now about to swap out a marquee player for a new coach who’ll be walking in to a rats nest as his predecessor departs with a seven-figure payout.

And while Brown has played no direct role in this cursed period for the Knights, never fear: he’ll have plenty of chances to personally contribute when he arrives.

Not only is the Eels five-eighth about to hoover $1.3m a year from the club’s salary cap for an entire decade, he’s supposed to do so while playing in the foreign position of halfback.

This would be fine if he wasn’t a robust running playmaker who deals more in muscle than minutiae, but he’s not — and that’s why signing him to play as a librarian is the cardboard straw of popular and practical decisions.

Dylan Brown will join Newcastle on a 10-year deal. Picture: NRL Photos

Kalyn Ponga’s time at Newcastle is set to fizzle out. (Photo by Scott Gardiner/Getty Images)

“He is not a Nathan Cleary or a Mitchell Moses, who are dominant halfbacks that go pretty much everywhere and do all the kicking,” club legend Johns warned on WWOS’ Immortal Behaviour in April.

“He’s not that dominant voice. He’s not a dominant halfback, it’s not Dylan’s nature.”

Of greater concern, Brown was supposed to subsidise his logbook on the L-Plates playing alongside Ponga, but now he’ll either be busy in France or learning to scream “through the gate sir!” in Japanese.

Add the fact the new arrival is playing for a coach he didn’t sign for in a team missing the generational talent he was promised, and you can already hear the decade of blame he’ll cop for going viral leaving a toilet cubicle and not being Gary Johns’ son.

Even Brown himself thinks his deal is already a lemon, with the Kiwi international reportedly knocking back an offer to join the Knights early in favour of somewhere safer for his ego, like playing reserve grade in front of 35 people and an Otto bin.

All in all, the new recruit shapes as the face of Newcastle’s next lap around its möbius strip of pain, a club that as rugby league’s Dot.com Boom peaked in the late 90s and burst in the early noughties.

Ponga was supposed to be Newcastle’s saviour. They made finals and he won a Dally M, but it was a tough run at the Knights. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

While inarguably an upgrade on the ghastly Nathan Brown years, O’Brien’s era will be remembered for making up the numbers in finals before switching his halves pairings so frequently that it became a game of three card monte where everybody won except Newcastle.

A new coach will at least provide fans with a psychological band-aid before another decade of a salary cap weighed down by one reluctant saviour and a smattering of journeymen and mulleted locals.

As for Ponga, it can only mean two things when rumours emerge of his interest in rugby: either the Knights are struggling, or it’s Tuesday again.

The club might as well get his dalliance over and done with by allowing him to finally embark on the rugby league “gap year” he’s craved:

A stint in French rugby, six games in Japan and then an unsurprising return with the Roosters.

- Dane Eldridge is a warped cynic yearning for the glory days of rugby league, a time when the sponges were magic and the Mondays were mad. He’s never strapped on a boot in his life, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.