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Among my fondest memories covering this game are the many trips I made to Newcastle to cover Knights home games from 1997 to 2000, when the Johns brothers were at their brilliant best and the Knights played to packed houses that were enthralled by what they saw.
Some days, the Knights would have the opposition badly beaten well ahead of full time and Andrew and Matthew would pull out the party tricks.
Outrageous passes that would cover 20 to 25 metres and hit their designated target on the chest.
Sometimes, it would be Andrew, way over on one side of the field, throwing the long ball to Matthew, who would then throw an equally long ball to a centre or winger who found himself in huge space.
Or Matthew to Andrew and then to the outside man. Same plan, same result, just different order.
Other times, one of the Johns boys would kick to a winger on the second or third tackle, surprising a compressed defence. Again, the ball landing on the chest, usually for a try.
Not in the game plan, but who cared? It was great entertainment.
It was like you imagined Andrew and Matthew as kids, honing their super skills playing in the backyard of their home at Cessnock.
The defence was often bewildered by the skill and vision of this great halves partnership and the ability of the rest of what was a very good Newcastle team overall to capitalise on their brilliance.
Premierships were won in 1997 and 2001, the second after Matthew had been squeezed out of the club due to salary cap issues.
Fast forward to the hard times the Knights are going through now and it is difficult to stomach if you remember those tough teams that mirrored the attitude of the working-class town in the club’s early years and the glory days that came along with the Johns boys.
The 62-0 loss at home to Cronulla on Sunday was abysmal. The Knights, fielding a number of rookies due to injury problems, particularly in the halves, were played off the park by a Sharks side that is clearly capable of winning the premiership.
But it wasn’t a one-off awful performance. In the previous round, the Knights were beaten 38-0 away by Sydney Roosters. So that’s 100-0 across two games.
The game before that, they lost 26-10 at home to Manly, and the game before that they went down 53-0 away to Brisbane. That’s 179-10 across four games.
In the game immediately before this current, four-game horror stretch, Newcastle beat Wests Tigers 18-16 at home. That obviously doesn’t say much for the Tigers, who have faded after a good start to the season and now lost seven of their 10 games.
The Knights have hit rock bottom and they’re going to have to hope the kids they are blooding now are the makings of a good side in the future.
Heaven help the club if they’re not, because right now Newcastle would struggle to attract established stars from other clubs and would probably have to pay considerable “overs” just to have a chance of getting them.
Cronulla haven’t got any of these problems. They have been able to recruit strongly in recent years, with Ben Barba, Jack Bird, Michael Ennis, Chad Townsend – who was originally a Shark and then joined the Warriors before returning – and James Maloney among their signings.
Townsend has been a revelation who has recently made more and more people sit up and take notice, but it is Maloney who is the most valuable player when it comes to the Sharks having established themselves as a consistently threatening team in attack.
The 62 points they scored against the Knights pushed the Sharks just ahead of North Queensland and Brisbane as the highest-scoring team in the competition after 10 rounds.
Cronulla could defend and stay in the grind most times, but when they were eliminated 39-0 by the Cowboys in last season’s semi-finals it once again highlighted where they were lacking. They just didn’t have the points in them.
This is the best chance the Sharks have had of finally winning the premiership since the last time they made the grand final, in the Super League competition of 1997.
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