An alarming start to the season has left Knights coach Adam O’Brien pondering a Catch-22 situation – and the merits of risk versus reward – as he strives to reignite his team’s misfiring attack.
Two years ago, when they embarked on a memorable 10-game winning streak that culminated in their first home play-off in 17 years, Newcastle were the hottest team in the NRL with the ball in hand.
They racked up 114 tries across the regular season – the most in the competition – and their points-per-game average of 26.08 was on a par with premiers Penrith (26.88), runners-up Brisbane (26.63) and perennial heavyweights Melbourne (26.13).
Since then, however, it has been an uphill slog.
Newcastle made the finals last year despite scoring the second-fewest points in the competition (470, at 19.5 per game) and have found it even harder to get across the line in 2025.
They have scored just nine tries in five games this season, and only 46 points. To put that in context, last-placed Parramatta have 79 points and 13 tries to their name, albeit having played an extra game.
A season-best home crowd of 25,960 sat in stunned silence at McDonald Jones Stadium last Sunday as the Knights fumbled and bumbled their way to a 20-4 loss to Wests Tigers.
Only a scrappy try by five-eighth Fletcher Sharpe in the final minute of the match allowed Newcastle to escape the embarrassment of being kept scoreless for a second consecutive match, after a 20-0 shut-out against Canterbury, which followed a 26-6 loss to Gold Coast.
That means the Knights have scored only two tries in their past three hours of game time. So what’s gone wrong?
The Knights have scored just two tries in their past three games.Credit: Getty Images
Injuries up front
Senior forwards Jacob Saifiti, Adam Elliott, Jack Hetherington and Dylan Lucas were all out with injuries last week. O’Brien was also forced to switch hooker Phoenix Crossland to halfback because Jack Cogger was also unavailable. That left Newcastle with a makeshift pack, and they were no match for the Tigers’ young tyros.
The Knights spent most of the game on the back foot and rarely had enough momentum to provide good ball for strike weapons Kalyn Ponga, Bradman Best and Dane Gagai.
This highlights Newcastle’s lack of depth and quality, in the forwards. In recent seasons they have parted company, with the likes of Mitch Barnett, Josh King, Daniel Saifiti and David Klemmer, and next year Leo Thompson is joining Canterbury.
Young and the tryless
Don’t underestimate what a massive setback it was for Newcastle when winger Dominic Young joined Sydney Roosters at the end of 2023.
The towering English import, who the Knights signed as an 18-year-old on the strength of two Super League games, scored 25 tries in 2023 to shatter the club record. In his 51 top-grade games for Newcastle, Young crossed the stripe 43 times, at a strike rate of 84.3 per cent.
It’s not just Young’s tries that Newcastle are missing.
Dominic Young was a prolific tryscorer for the Knights.Credit: Getty
He and the nuggety Greg Marzhew – who scored 22 tries in 2023 – provided arguably the best one-two kick-return in the NRL that season.
The Knights probably didn’t realise Young’s real value until he was no longer there.
Playing it too safe
The two circles painted on the main field at Newcastle’s training base provide a fair indication of how O’Brien wants his team to play.
The circles are positioned in the corners, about 10 metres out from the goal line. They’re the “drop zone”, where O’Brien wants his kickers to land their high kicks, so that his outside backs can swamp the catcher and hopefully pin the opposition down with multiple tackles in their red zone. It’s a process O’Brien wants them to repeat until the other team cracks.
Knights coach Adam O’Brien.Credit: Getty
As he explained last year: “We’ve identified that we kick to set up our defensive system … we don’t make any apologies for doing that. It might be boring at times, but it wins for us.”
O’Brien added that he didn’t really want his chasers to compete for the ball, to avoid “hairy moments on that first play, because it wrecks your whole set”.
It might sound rudimentary, but O’Brien insists his team can add “all the bells and whistles” as the season unfolds, providing they keep winning the arm-wrestle, week in, week out.
The problem is that every team aims to kick to the corners, chase hard and trap the opposition in their own territory.
Mind over matter
Is there a more enigmatic team in the NRL than Newcastle?
When they’re full of self-belief, as they were in 2023, they’re a dangerous, unpredictable outfit, but when results are not going their way, their collective confidence seems to wane rapidly.
“I guess a bit of performance anxiety just tightens you up,” O’Brien said.
“So, you stop throwing any questions at the opposition. You become one-out. It gets like quicksand.
The coach admitted his main focus this week would be to “free them up a little bit” and “get a little bit of enjoyment” back into their football.
Errors of their ways
The Knights have the NRL’s worst possession percentage (46 per cent) and the second-worst worst set-completion average (70 per cent).
They have made the most handling errors in the NRL (72), and their total distance gained from kicks (2557 metres) is the second-worst in the competition.
None of which are statistics that are a byproduct of free-flowing, clinical attack. And therein lies the Catch-22 dilemma for O’Brien, who felt his players were “fixated” with their completion rates against the Tigers.
Now he wants them to take more chances in possession, when logically that could lead to even more errors.
Parramatta’s Dylan Brown on the attack against Newcastle in the trials.Credit: Getty Images
Half-measures
The Knights will pay Dylan Brown an unprecedented $13 million over the next 10 years for a reason.
That reason is that O’Brien craves a settled halves pairing.
On Sunday against Cronulla, Newcastle will field their third play-making combination of the season, Tyson Gamble and Fletcher Sharpe.
The experienced Jackson Hastings, meanwhile, has not been sighted in the top grade for almost 10 months.
Maybe Brown will be the man to spark Newcastle’s attack and unlock the true potential of Ponga.
But the Parramatta five-eighth won’t be providing any salvation in the short term. The Eels are in no mood to grant him an early release, and the Knights don’t have the salary-cap space, anyway.
It’s up to O’Brien and his 2025 squad to figure this out before it’s too late.
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