One of rugby league’s best developing stories is the rise and rise of Newcastle Knights head coach Rick Stone, who is enjoying the view from the top of the NRL table, unbeaten after four starts.
If you’ll excuse the pun, the man is proving to be a knight in shining armour, the ideal successor to Wayne Bennett, whose three-year tenure in the Hunter produced a mixed bag of results.
The club clearly needed to choose its new coach carefully and in Stone, a man who knows the workings of the club inside out, they look to have come up with a winner.
Bennett opted out of the last season of his four-year Newcastle contract but I believe he left the club in good shape, leaving a sound platform for his successor Stone. Many fans forget that the Knights were really hard to beat over the final third of last year’s competition, even though they missed the eight-team playoffs by two wins.
It’s only early days (and admittedly the Knights have had a degree of luck to go 4-0) but there are encouraging signs that the club has begun a season that will generate enormous excitement in the league-mad city in 2015.
To me it seems clear that Stone already has his players eating out of his hand. He is an excellent communicator who has the ear of the club’s senior as well as the emerging players.
He has the Knights playing an attractive brand of football with ball in hand while the famous Newcastle steel is there when resolute defence is required.
Tactically, Stone looks to be as good as any of his peers and it will be fascinating to see how his team performs when the heavyweights such as the Rabbitohs, Roosters and Bulldogs roll around. And won’t it be absorbing when the Stone-coached Newcastle tackles Bennett’s Broncos at Hunter Stadium on Monday, May 25!
I really like what he has already achieved with prop Kade Snowden who, with the Wests Tigers’ Aaron Woods, is the form front rower of the NRL. Stone has made Snowden his forward leader and his stats after four rounds speak for themselves. He has run for 150 metres to give the Knights’ pack awesome thrust and has averaged 34 tackles per game.
If James Tamou continues to struggle for the Cowboys, I wouldn’t be surprised if Snowden gets a tap on the shoulder from Laurie Daley for State of Origin 1. He has been there before (2011) and relishes the heavy slog up front.
Of course, this is not Stone’s debut as a first grade coach at Newcastle – he has had stints there before. The stats say he has been at the helm for a total of 58 games, winning 29 for a winning percentage of exactly 50 per cent.
Newcastle fans appear to like him a lot and the players are responding to his level-headed approach to the game and fair-handed selection policies that reward hard work and consistency.
I am really looking forward to tomorrow’s Knights-Dragons duel at Hunter Stadium to see what eventuates as the two clubs play for the Alex McKinnon Cup. It will be interesting to see how Newcastle responds to a brighter than usual spotlight that accompanies such strong early-season form.
The Dragons have built an imposing away record in the Hunter over the past decade but I’m tipping the locals to continue their run. There’s a rolling Stone there for sure and this one gathers moss and competition points.
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