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SMITHY: What sunk Stone at the Knights (and how to fix it)

29th July, 2015
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2016 featured none of the bloodshed of 2015 — but can this season deliver? (AAP Image/Action Photographics, Colin Whelan)
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29th July, 2015
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To understand Newcastle Knights you need to live in Newcastle.

On countess occasions during my time in that great place someone would welcome me and tell me how much I would love living there, followed by “it’s the best place in the world”. I would respond with “I have loved every place I have lived in” and followed with “where else have you lived?”.

Generally it was “nowhere else but Newy”!

The criteria the Knights board apparently used for appointing the coach following Wayne Bennett had a similar policy line to my welcoming committee. They believed and wanted to get back to someone who understood the Knights fans and their culture so that meant a home grown coach.

I would like to think Rick Stone would have got that job under any criteria. He has great coaching qualities. First hand I can guarantee that is without a doubt.

So why did it go so wrong?

Firstly the thought that Wayne Bennett wasn’t home grown so had lost his talent while in Necastle is absurd. Secondly the club’s two standout coaches, Alan McMahon (inaugural coach) was from Wollongong and later Sydney, and Englishman Malcolm Reilly was the other, and the man who delivered the club’s first premiership.

Even their other premiership coach Michael Hagen is a Queenslander via the Bulldogs.

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Go figure!

Rather than any criteria used to select Rick Stone let’s look at what he inherited in his second shot at the position after doing pretty well in his first. Rememberm this is not the Knights team full of stars but:
– Specifically A. Johns-less
– A team being rebuilt after losing almost all their stars oven the previous few seasons
– Changed CEOs multiple times
– Changed coaches four times
– Operated on a very skinny budget causing all sorts of debt issues
– Taken over by a maverick spender with no experience in sport club management

When Mr Tinkler rang ker-ching, coach Bennett strode into town so coach Stone stepped aside.

Not much changed in terms of results, but more ker-ching resulted in more veteran players via recruitment. The appointment of a brand spanking new everything possible kept the hope of the promised “three premierships while Wayne is coach” alive.

That recruitment of veteran players to the Knights on expensive and extended multi-year contracts was the most telling, and something coach Stone is paying for.

Please, people wondering what has gone wrong, give coach Bennett some credit.

He left Brisbane when they no longer had stars dripping from the chandeliers, he left the Dragons after they had recruited similarly to the Knights – expensive vets with extended multi-year contracts to get them in – and left when it was not looking so flash for the future.

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Steve Price paid a real price as that salary cap bit and is still munching on the bone of a club with ongoing difficulties in that department. Wayne is no dummy.

But it’s not all about Wayne, at least not in Newcastle’s case.

The Knights had their most productive time from 1995 until the mid-2000s. They won two comps, and in Andrew Johns words to me “we should have won five”. I agree completely, such was their talent pool. They also should have set their club up forever.

The success was largely based on young, home-grown players but the work, for that talented crew to become that wonderfully skilful team was done in the late 80s and early 90s when David Waite and Peter Sharp, and many other tremendous developers of footy talent, built the base.

They laid the foundations and ultimately reaped the rewards with bucket loads of young blokes busting their gut to represent their local club. So many they filtered everywhere across the footy landscape – every NRL team had at least one and some had a few.

So somewhere way back in that golden period someone, or a group of them, went to sleep at the wheel. There was a lot of partying in that decade from 1995. The phrase “everyone in Newcastle was dining out on A. Johns’ credit card” was coined by someone who did the most dining I believe.

So where to now for the Knights? What path do the decision makers follow from here?

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If they listen to those highly parochial fans who know that Newcastle is the best place in the world and want the home-grown days to return, they will need to do one of two things.

Either mount a very strong PR campaign to explain why that can’t happen (and throw in their resignations very soon after) or start the process of development of locally-grown players only (and batten down the hatches while the team loses for some seasons to come – those resignations will still be needed).

As a city and proud sporting region, Newcastle itself needs to take a look at the rest of the world of pro sport.

They will need to search hard to find a winning franchise with a locally grown-only philosophy. And an independent internal study will show they probably don’t have that same depth of talent that those pioneer Knights coaches had to get the whole winning thing going way back, when they were the most admired team in the world of rugby league.

Newcastle and the Hunter is a terrific place, but as I have found out having lived in 33 different houses in my life and enjoyed every place I have ever resided in, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But the winning scoreboard at your home ground, whereever it may be, is the most wonderful sight of all.

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