This Knights premiership charge is bigger than ’97. Which is why I won’t be talking to the team

October 4, 2026 — 2:00am

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Newcastle’s run to Sunday’s grand final is bigger than all the drama and delirium of our 1997 premiership.

But respectfully, I won’t set foot in my home city this week. Justin Holbrook has asked me to talk to his team more than once this finals series, but I won’t do that either.

These Knights don’t need a blubbering old halfback talking to them, anyway.

They’ve got all the inspiration they need in their talismanic captain Kalyn Ponga. And a town, a community, and a rugby league region they are playing for like never before.

I have lived and breathed the game in the Hunter my whole life, and even now, I struggle to explain the connection between Newcastle and the Knights.

Rugby league is simply a way of life for so many people in this part of the world. I notice it most when I drive around places like Cessnock, Kurri Kurri, Singleton and Maitland – the footy ground is always right in the middle of the town.

Just like when churches and cathedrals were built in the centre of a village because daily life revolved around religion, in the Hunter, we worship beneath the crossbar.

Then you look to where rugby league began in northern England more than a century ago; working-class roots run deep through both regions and the game itself.

Mining – a boom-or-bust industry – underpins both places and people too.

You think of the character this builds in a community. Think about how grim times could get in a mining town in the middle of winter. Resilience just becomes a way of life for you, but so does 80 minutes of rugby league a week – when all your hard work at least involves a football.

Growing up in a rugby league family in a rugby league town,........

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