Newcastle have warmed up for the finals with another win, extending their streak to nine with a hard-fought 32-12 victory over St George Illawarra – aided by two of the best finishes of the year from winger Dom Young.
The English winger moved clear as the top single-season tryscorer in Knights history, but it was the style of his work that caught the eye as much as the numbers. The first, in which he was upside down and off the floor, only to ground backwards, will go down as one of the best seen in the NRL.
Jacob Saifiti opened the scoring after two minutes and from then on, this was never in doubt. The Dragons put up a fight, as they generally have of late, but lost, as they also tend to do. They end the year with six defeats on the spin.
With a home final confirmed, Newcastle would have been forgiven for resting a few players. Kalyn Ponga was out and a few others sat down but beyond that, there was no chance of Adam O’Brien letting this momentum slip.
“I was always confident we could turn it,” he reflected on their poor start to the year.
“I didn’t think about fifth spot and a home semi and all that, I just knew we had a good team that was capable of putting it against the better teams. I had belief in the playing group.
“We spoke all week about putting in a really professional performance and by professional, we meant it didn’t matter who wasn’t playing, it was more about who was.”
The Knights now travel back up the coast for their first home final since 2006, where they will face Canberra or the Roosters, depending on the Raiders’ result tomorrow.
A loss on Sunday afternoon will send the Green Machine to the Hunter, and on this form, that is one of the toughest assignments in rugby league.
St George Illawarra had their moments, with a nice chip and chase from Ben Hunt and a classic Mikaele Ravalawa charge at the corner, but they never got close.
Coach Ryan Carr’s interim stint is over, Shane Flanagan will arrive and the players can’t wait to get away.
“We’re learning a lot of tough lessons, unfortunately, this playing group along the way,” he said.
“But I think you can see from the performances over the last two months that we can go toe-to-toe with anyone in the comp when we get it right. Unfortunately, we didn’t tonight.”
Newcastle were very sensible in how they played this. There were legitimate injury reasons to sit down Ponga and Jackson Hastings, and Dane Gagai, Tyson Frizell and Phoenix Crossland could be afforded a week off given how much footy they have played.
But crucially, the balance and direction of the side was not compromised, while players that might be needed were given a chance.
Lachlan Miller has been lesser spotted in first grade of late, but if Ponga goes down, it’ll likely be he who steps in. He needed the run. Enari Tuala, too, as the next cab off the outside back ranks, and ditto Brodie Jones in the back row.
That’s the fitness reasoning.
For guys like Young, Bradman Best, Greg Marzhew, Tyson Gamble and Adam Elliott, it was vital that they keep going to keep the structure together.
O’Brien has built a system that relies on backline metres, a strong connection between inside and out and energy in the middle. Those five as much as anybody matter in keeping that going.
Tactically, it made total sense to keep that cohort together.
There’s a thing part too: emotion. Newcastle find themselves in a strange position where they are already in and already at home and thus have nothing to play for, but are also on a huge run of form that they absolutely needed to keep going. Momentum is a huge deal at this time of year.
With that in mind, O’Brien knew this wasn’t a dead rubber at all. As much as the players know that it doesn’t matter, the winning feeling is hard gained and easily lost, as are the habits of play that come with playing well and getting results.
If one of the key players had gone down, fans might righteously howl that they were risked in a theoretically meaningless game. But there’s no meaningless game when you’re on a roll like this. Every win is another win, and glib as that sounds, it matters.
This game brought down the curtain on the Ryan Carr interim era at the Dragons, leaving the coach with a record of 3-10 in change.
On the surface, that’s pretty bad, especially when you factor in that he began by splitting the difference in his first two games. He departs off a six game losing streak and one of the last ten.
Yet the numbers don’t go close to telling the story. The Dragons were a rabble when he took over, and they’re not now.
Since getting thumped at Cronulla at the end of June, they have been competitive in every game and, with a little luck, would have picked up more than the one win that they did.
Indeed, the one victory they actually record in that period was the one that nobody saw, coming as it did over the Wests Tigers on the same night as the Matildas opener and the first day of the final Ashes Test.
One hopes that any prospective recruiter looks beyond the results and into the details on Carr’s time in charge. Anthony Griffin was sacked on the back of a six game string of defeats, but there was no sign that they would get better and little way of judging how they thought games were won.
Carr has them playing for each other and the shirt. They still lose, because the Dragons roster is one of the worst around, but they keep fighting, which is more than certain othe cellar-dwelling Sydney clubs can say. The performances have improved even if the results have not.
The coach is just 35 and has plenty of time in front of him to use the experience he has acquired in the last few months. He’s already a good coach and will improve further. When jobs are available in the NRL or Super League in the future, he’ll be in the conversation.
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