Red and blue drenched all across the city. As many as twelve thousand, on a Wednesday, for a training run. Fans with paint ready to go, and some who have already run the brush across everything they own.
Here’s a cracking story I read a little earlier this week: Lachlan Gray, a painter by trade, told his mates weeks ago he’d do the house red and blue if the Knights actually made the decider. He did it while his fiancée was at work. “It was a bit of a surprise when she got home yesterday,” he told the ABC.
It’s exactly the kind of wild reaction you’d expect from a city that has been dragged from the absolute bottom to the peak in record time. Twelve months ago, the Knights finished dead last in a brutal end to the season. A year and change later, they’re preparing to play the Sydney Roosters at Accor Stadium for the premiership. Eighty minutes from championship glory that Newcastle hasn’t tasted since way back in 2001.
It’s an incredible story for any team: they’re only the second side in the NRL era to go from last to a decider in a single year. (And it’s also the first grand final since 2020 to feature neither of last year’s final two.)
Newcastle and footy alike needed this one. Whatever the scoreboard eventually reads at Homebush on Sunday, a team that was only just at the bottom of the ladder has given the whole comp permission to dream again.
Twelve men and a Hollywood script
Any scriptwriter worth their salt would have been told they hammed it up a little too much with this one, even I’ll admit. Newcastle finished seventh with 14 wins and ten losses, and then just kept defying the odds in the finals. First, they swept South Sydney aside in a 20-10 tussle, then overcame the last hurdle they’d stumbled at by holding out one of the title favourites, the New Zealand Warriors, 12-10.
That left the four-in-a-row champions and reigning minor premiers, the Penrith Panthers, standing between them and the grand final. The odds were long—out to $4 by most bookies pre-kick-off—and the chance Newcastle could beat the NRL’s modern juggernauts only got worse when hooker Phoenix Crossland was sent off for a nasty hip-drop tackle that broke Nathan Cleary’s leg. The scores were level at 6-6, but everyone ruled them out the minute the finger went up.
But, a man down never stopped the romance, and the Knights felled one of the best club teams rugby league has ever seen, spurred on by Sandon Smith, who was only wearing the No.7 because marquee signing Dylan Brown was injured. He scored two tries, mind you, including an 80-metre, 80th-minute intercept sprint that had 57,102 up in their seats at Homebush and hundreds of thousands of Novocastrians in the Hunter and across the globe sobbing and cheering in equal measure.
“It’s the ultimate fairytale,” Smith admitted to ABC Sport soon after, and I have to agree entirely. Heck, even just his story lines up: he plays his old club for the premiership Sunday, after he followed Justin Holbrook north for a second chance.
Then there’s Holbrook, who sprinted a lap of the ground to thank the crowd. Go down to 12 with 30,000 behind you, he said, and it feels like 14. He may have been robbed of the NRL Coach of the Year gong this week at the Dally M Awards, but he’s already proven Gold Coast were wrong to dump him early.
And look at the rest. Kalyn Ponga cried on-field, and later told the Newcastle Herald he’d never been part of anything like it, as he looks to prove to the NRL world his Knights faith has been right. Dane Gagai, 35 years old and 339 games in, rated it among the best wins of his career. Tyson Frizell waited 16 years to play in a decider.
And injured halfback Dylan Brown, stuck watching from the sideline this time around, summed up the week at Monday’s Harbour Bridge march. “You can’t not be happy when you’re seeing your fans,” he told NRL.com proudly.
Finally, Greg Marzhew put the whole season in one line: “This time last year, no one would have pictured this… being where we are,” the gun winger told the Herald.
There’s romance everywhere you look in the story and it’s deepest in Newy.
The red and blue city, and a comp along for the ride
Back home, it’s been tears and cheers and everything in between across the city and the Hunter since Sunday evening. Every fan and past star alike has had nothing but hope welling in their hearts for days now.
Look at Matty Johns. The Fox Sports coverage turned to him on Sunday for his regular show, and he could barely get his words out before shedding tears. He made sure to point out just how much the Knights faithful had copped over the years and was eager to declare the team doesn’t win without them. Just look at the journey down to that already-famed preliminary final victory; many of those diehards had spent four hours on stalled trains and a jammed M1 just to get to Homebush. Some even had to hitch a ride with Newcastle Jets skipper Max Burgess.
(The state government has since urgently postponed Sunday’s planned track work on the Newcastle line so that nobody misses kick-off this time.)
The whole week has felt like 1997 again. Hundreds marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Monday. The merchandise queue at Wednesday’s open session ran for hundreds of metres, and there’s been sellouts multiple times. McDonald Jones Stadium, with its (slightly shortened, for works) 27,500-seat capacity, opens as a live site Sunday for everyone who missed out on a seat at the sold-out decider. A striped red-and-blue house in Lambton became the emblem of the ’97 build-up, standing for years after that victory, and the brushes are out again.
I have a few stories from just around me, too. One of my mates has already had “Newy” tattooed on her leg this week. Another spent his whole Sunday evening refreshing Ticketmaster to get grand final seats (and, thankfully, succeeded). Elsewhere, my sister-in-law is flying back home, not for a seat at Homebush, but just to be in the city when it all plays out. She wants to be here, no matter what. And my wife and I are turning up fairly late to a friend’s wedding so she doesn’t miss it.
And beyond the city, it’s hard to find anyone outside Bondi not backing the Knights. Even defeated Panthers captain Isaah Yeo is tipping the Knights to win the whole thing. “Belief’s a funny thing; it can be a superpower,” he said after the upset. And supercoach Ivan Cleary, less than two hours after watching his son loaded into an ambulance, still chose to congratulate Newcastle over everything else.
The Guardian’s Alex McKinnon (no, not that one) wrote similarly two days after Newcastle ended his team’s season: “The Knights are unquestionably the people’s choice this weekend.” The ABC’s Jon Healy signed off his live blog on the same note, writing that no fanbase deserved it more. No arguments here. Working-class Newcastle has made more headlines for ownership collapses and wooden spoons than for football across the Knights and the Jets since the early 2010s, while the Roosters already own 15 premierships in Sydney’s heartland.
And now, to Sunday…
Of course, none of this makes the Knights favourites. No team in the NRL era has ever triumphed in a grand final from outside the top four. Starting No.9 Crossland is suspended for four matches, and Harrison Graham (and likely Thomas Cant, for stints) will be taking his spot. Gagai is the only Knight who’s played in a decider.
That’s against the Roosters, still carrying five from their 2019 premiership side, and a record run that largely only faltered when Sam Walker was hurt. They put 46 points on Nicho Hynes’ Cronulla Sharks, and then another 36 points against one of the top contenders, the Redcliffe Dolphins, to get to the big day.
But the dream is there, and win or lose, the Knights have done more than anyone could have ever asked for to revive it. Rugby league believes again. There’s an incredible red and blue frenzy sweeping Australia, and beyond.
No grand final loss on Sunday will undo what has already happened. The parents at the open training on Wednesday were children in 1997 and 2001, and are now taking the next generation on a similar ride of a lifetime. The captain they knocked out is tipping them even after they ended his own chance, and a lifelong Panthers fan is writing columns for them, because the romance is well and truly back. And, that’s after we have already seen one of the best rugby league wins ever.
Kick-off is 7.30PM on Sunday. In Newcastle especially, the tattoos are healing, the paint’s already dry, and the romance has swept up a city in red and blue.
– Isaac McIntyre
