This Knights premiership charge is bigger than ’97. Which is why I won’t be talking to the team

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Newcastle’s run to Sunday’s grand final is bigger than all the drama and delirium of our 1997 premiership.

But respectfully, I won’t set foot in my home city this week. Justin Holbrook has asked me to talk to his team more than once this finals series, but I won’t do that either.

These Knights don’t need a blubbering old halfback talking to them, anyway.

They’ve got all the inspiration they need in their talismanic captain Kalyn Ponga. And a town, a community, and a rugby league region they are playing for like never before.

I have lived and breathed the game in the Hunter my whole life, and even now, I struggle to explain the connection between Newcastle and the Knights.

Rugby league is simply a way of life for so many people in this part of the world. I notice it most when I drive around places like Cessnock, Kurri Kurri, Singleton and Maitland – the footy ground is always right in the middle of the town.

Something in the water: Jye Kelly surfs Newcastle Beach in his Knights jersey in grand final week.Sitthixay DitthavongJust like when churches and cathedrals were built in the centre of a village because daily life revolved around religion, in the Hunter, we worship beneath the crossbar.

Then you look to where rugby league began in northern England more than a century ago; working-class roots run deep through both regions and the game itself.

Mining – a boom-or-bust industry – underpins both places and people too.

You think of the character this builds in a community. Think about how grim times could get in a mining town in the middle of winter. Resilience just becomes a way of life for you, but so does 80 minutes of rugby league a week – when all your hard work at least involves a football.

Growing up in a rugby league family in a rugby league town, Matthew and I didn’t look up to the superstars of the 1980s in Sydney. Our superheroes were Cessnock’s first-graders every week. The Goannas were royalty in my town.

So when I say this premiership charge is bigger than the club’s first grand final in 1997, almost 30 years ago, I don’t say it lightly.

But as evidence, I give you the 12,000 fans – that’s more than some rival NRL clubs attract to actual games – who turned up to Knights training on Wednesday. A crowd of 22,000 will fill McDonald Jones Stadium to watch the grand final on Sunday night. Those tickets were gone in just three minutes.

And to be honest, I say this year is bigger and better than 1997, because it is just such a surprise. No one, and I mean no one, expected this.

It’s 2026. Life doesn’t have fairytales any more. Luckily, sport, and Newcastle, still do.

Only last July, I was writing cranky columns, reluctantly telling Ponga that he owed Newcastle nothing and should chase a title somewhere else while he still could.

I would have considered 2026 a good season if the Knights had lifted themselves out of the bottom four. I certainly wasn’t alone.

Not that long ago I was asking myself, ‘When are we going to compete for a grand final again? Is it going to be in my lifetime?’

Nothing but red and blue: Knights fans turn out no matter what.Getty ImagesSo to be in this position so quickly after last year’s wooden spoon – the Knights’ fifth since 2001 – you look for the common denominator throughout all of that. And the only constant is the people of Newcastle and the Hunter.

When the Knights finished stone, motherless last in 2015, 2016 and 2017, home crowds still averaged more than 15,000. Last season, that figure was still pushing almost 21,000.

The fans have turned up day-in, day-out. Through the Nathan Tinkler and Wayne Bennett years. The thrashings and thumpings. They’re just unbelievable.

And the way this Knights team plays, it reflects that commitment as well as any group of Newcastle players I’ve seen.

With Jacob Saifiti out suspended, Dane Gagai, 35 years young and playing his final Knights game, is the last man standing from 2016. That year the Knights won one single game all season.

There was a game against Cronulla that year when poor old Gags had lost his grandma earlier in the week, been abused by his home crowd and lost 62-0 to the Sharks.

He broke down that day 10 years ago. Gagai went to Souths, enjoyed great success and then came back to Newcastle, and he’s always been a player who has truly embraced the place.

Danny Buderus tells me that commitment involved Gags buying himself a surfboard, because that’s what you do in Newcastle – even if, like Gags, you had no idea what to do with it. So that meant his teammates would paddle the board at the back of Merewether Beach for their star centre, and Gags would then swim out the back and meet them, and then try to surf.

The Knights at their lowest ebb: Tariq Sims consoles Dane Gagai after a brutal afternoon against Cronulla in 2016.NRL ImageryAfter 241 games for Newcastle, he deserves this grand final as much as anyone.

Leading that connection between the club, town and masses has been Ponga. The raw emotion he has shown and the tears he has shed this finals series say it all.

He has embraced playing for Newcastle and playing for a higher cause like few others before – the Knights have had an emblazoned photo of Ponga celebrating their round one Las Vegas victory in their dressing room all season.

Nothing sums up his leadership better than his shot on Penrith’s star prop Moses Leota last Sunday.

With four minutes left to go, he put his body on the line, belted a front-rower who is 15 kilos heavier than him and went outside his job title – because his teammates and his town needed him to.

If Newcastle pull off the fairytale victory against the Roosters in the grand final, then that is what we will look back on as a premiership-defining moment.

So when I say these Knights don’t need any pre-game address from me, it’s because they’ve got Kalyn. I watched the boys train at Olympic Park this week, and they were relaxed, composed and frankly, a bit scary with how physical they were with each other.

Kalyn and underrated, reliable forward Mat Croker were the guys holding court at the end of training.

I’m also a superstitious old No.7. Justin asked me if I would say something before the Souths game, but I held fire and the Knights got the job done. Now, I won’t dare think of straying from my pre-game routine – which means no speeches and no trips to Newcastle.

This photo of Kalyn Ponga (centre, back to camera) celebrating Newcastle’s upset win in Las Vegas has been blown up onto the Knights dressing room wall.NRL ImageryThis team doesn’t need all us old buggers firing them up, anyway. They know how proud we are to be represented by them. Guys like Paul Harragon, Billy Peden, Kurt Gidley and so many others are bursting with pride.

My brother and I are crying like babies on national television. And the people of Newcastle and the Hunter region – they deserve this most of all.

They have a rugby league fairytale to believe in, in a time when fairytales weren’t meant to exist any more.

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