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The Newcastle Knights’ season is going from bad to absolute hell. With just five wins and eight losses, including only one win from the past nine games, they sit 14th on the NRL ladder at the season’s halfway mark.
During the last nine games Rick Stone’s team have lacked the desire to be competitive, and the want to be successful.
Across all grades this season the Knights have shown themselves to be mentally weak, lacking the necessary mental fortitude and discipline to even compete. It is nowhere near good enough.
Tyrone Roberts is one example of this. His body language is soft as butter and he is scared to put his body on the line. This is not good enough for someone who has shown flashes of becoming a formidable talent. Roberts must be more confident, show a bit of mongrel and start running the ball fast and straight. Start being the tough, mean guy, not the soft, nice guy.
At just 23 years old, Joseph Leilua has all the talent in the world, however he has shown a very unprofessional attitude to his career as a rugby league player, with his all-round fitness and commitment under a huge question mark.
Leilua needs to listen to people of authority and realise his potential. Show some responsibility, discipline and respect for yourself and your team, and things might start looking better.
Kurt Gidley is another player struggling to make an impact this season. Gidley would know that his body is simply not up to demands of being a professional NRL player on a consistent basis anymore. He is simply having more bad days than good, and it’s time to step aside.
Stepping aside is also what Chris Houston and Clint Newton should do. Houston has shown very little impact, desire or leadership for someone with the experience that he has. Newton seems to want to be a bit-part player who spends the majority of his time in reserve grade. If that’s the case, he can go too.
Beau Scott has been a rough, tough and imposing player throughout his career, but he has been slow and unimposing in recent weeks, lacking his normal focus. Scott is a much better player than that. It is his responsibility to inspire his teammates, particularly the younger ones. Stand up and show your true colours before you leave the club at season’s end.
Jeremy Smith, Kade Snowden, David Fa’alogo and Tariq Sims are not putting in their best effort each and every week either. All four need to start leading this forward pack and team by example. So far none have even come close to doing this.
However, the person who deserves the vast majority of blame for the club’s current state is coach Rick Stone.
Stone looks to have no clue how to coach a professional rugby league team. He lacks leadership and motivational skills, as well as the guts to make tough decisions to ensure the success of the Newcastle Knights, both in the present and in the future.
As I said in an article about a month ago, “Right now, considering the talent he has at his disposal, Rick Stone is the worst coach in the NRL.”
He has more than confirmed my claims since, only winning one game out of the four games, including losing the last three games. Rick Stone is truly the worst coach in the NRL at this very moment.
It is time for the local media, journalists and writers in Newcastle to stop treating this man and this club like a protected species, and start making everyone at the Knights accountable for their actions and performances.
The people of Newcastle and its surrounds are too scared and tense to speak up about their true feelings about the club’s current state, and their thoughts on the coach.
The only option the Knights have is to remove Rick Stone as coach. He simply cannot handle the responsibilities and demands of being a first-grade coach.
Stone must go! That is the only option.
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