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Newcastle forward Neville Costigan believes the Knights will undergo a bigger transformation under new coach Wayne Bennett this NRL season than St George Illawarra did in 2009.
One week out from the Knights season-opener against the Dragons, Costigan made the bold claim that Bennett had already had a bigger impact at Newcastle than he did in the season when he turned the Dragons from fringe finalists to minor premiers in a 12-month period.
Costigan should know – not only was he in the Dragons squad which improved out of sight to lose just seven games on their way to the minor premiership, but he’s also been at the Knights since the 2011 pre-season.
“And there’s been a bigger improvement here than what I saw at the Dragons,” Costigan told AAP.
“At the Dragons, they were still training pretty hard and all the blokes there had good work ethics.
“Here, I think the boys have been in a comfort zone for the last few years.
“The boys were telling me they’d hardly done fitness as part of pre-season training.”
Costigan said since the arrival of Bennett and his high performance offsider Jeremy Hickmans, also from the Dragons, the players’ fitness levels have improved enormously.
And the 26-year-old believes that will help send the Knights, who finished eighth in 2011, rocketing up the ladder in a similar fashion to the Dragons three seasons ago.
“The fitness work we’ve done is alright for me because I’ve done it before but the rest of the boys got a bit of a shock,” Costigan said.
“They asked me how the fitness was before he came but I don’t think they knew what they were in for before Wayne got here.
“Everyone has lost heaps of weight and is much fitter than they were the last couple of years.”
The former Queensland representative also believes the addition of representative duo Kade Snowden and Adam Cuthbertson will boost the forward pack’s potency.
“It’s a bit different to last year’s pack. They’ve always had the skill but maybe not the fitness,” Costigan explained.
“We’ve got that now, and we’ve got guys like Kade and Cuthbo who can take two hitups a set, and there are some damaging runners in the pack now.”
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