Good Knight: Ponga’s brilliance confirms finals cluster

Kalyn Ponga was imperfectly perfect as the Knights won a brutal match against Manly, seemingly setting the NRL finalists in stone.

Starford To'a crashes over for the Knights against Manly. Picture: Getty Images

Here’s a cluster that won’t be eradicated: Panthers, Storm, Eels, Roosters, Raiders, Knights, Sharks, Rabbitohs. It’s the top eight of the NRL right now and it will be the top eight in the NRL when the finals commence sometime before Christmas … an event Peter V’landys may have enough clout to cancel if needs be.

The Knights’ 26-24 victory over Manly all but ended the play-offs hopes of the Sea Eagles and everybody else. The sea Eagles were tough and bold and brave and deserved better, but league doesn’t delve in sentimentalities. Cade Cust’s right knee was buggered. It only started hurting less when his right ankle became even more buggered. He soldiered on as personification of the Sea Eagles’ gallantry. On the last play of the game, he was crunched in a tackle. He stayed down a while. He might still be there now. It used to be the norm for clubs to lose one or two players to injury. It’s become so brutal that one player gets a couple of ailments for his trouble.

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Forget Knights fullback Kalyn Ponga’s speed and his inside-out, outside-in, up-down and all-round speed footwork. What about his toughness? He was belted from pillar to corner post. Crunched while taking bombs. Hammered on hit-ups. He kept getting to his feet as if constructed of rubber. In the 72nd minute, the Knights trailing 20-24, he ran on the last, down the short side, and gave a bullet pass for Enari Tuala’s match-levelling try. Ponga had the conversion to pinch a win.

He placed the ball on the tee with the care of someone sliding a candle into a birthday cake. He did the sort of breathing exercise Brad Fittler would commend, he started it at the right upright and let the westerly bring it back. At full-time, he went to his haunches, took off his headgear and laughed at the viciousness of it all. This was a furious contest; when Ponga shook hands with Joel Thompson, the Sea Eagles backrower had a mouthful of blood.

The Knights moved to sixth. The eighth-placed Rabbitohs were four points clear of the no-man’s land of ninth place. The Knights trailed 0-12 early. A loss would have left them vulnerable in the leading cluster but by full-time, led by the tough artistry of Ponga and captain Mitchell Pearce, they looked impregnable as finalists for the first time in a long time.

“Any game at this time of the year, with how congested the ladder is, is a big win,” Pearce said. “It’s a well-earned two points and I’m proud of the boys. It’s a big game for us. We haven’t been the best side, over the last couple of years, at coming back from poor starts. There was resilience shown from the group. I was happy with that. There’s still plenty of improvement but it was a tough game and we got away with the win.”

The NRL website on Sunday listed all 34 players for the game, as usual, but only 33 of them had headshots. No time yet for a happy snap of Knights recruit Blake Green in the ninth jersey of his career. The invisible man? So bloody difficult to defend against, invisible men. He warmed up in a shirt that had 320 on the back of it – either marking him as the Knights’ 320th player, or the Knights as his 320th club – but while he was rock solid, it was Ponga who was up to his neck in this result. He threw forward passes, he knocked-on, he was not flawless, he took a pounding. But the perfectly imperfect number one kept chancing his hand, kept putting his body on the line, kept zigging and zagging until the job was done. And then he had a chuckle as Cust clutched at his knee, and then his ankle, and then both.