REAL KNIGHTMARE
You have to feel for Newcastle fans when the players just don’t care
NEWCASTLE’S capitulation to the Wests Tigers at Campbelltown on Saturday night confirms what we’ve all suspected – the players have given up on coach Nathan Brown.
This was a pathetic performance from a once proud football club that had its season on the line.
There were five highly paid State of Origin players – Mitchell Pearce, Kalyn Ponga, Tim Glasby, Dave Klemmer and Daniel Saifiti – in a team that was still in contention to play finals football.
Take nothing away from the Tigers and a vintage Benji Marshall performance, but Newcastle just didn’t turn up and some of their players didn’t have a go. They threw in the towel.
The body language and reaction from senior Knights players last week showed there was little if any disappointment around the announcement that Brown would depart at season’s end.
It would just be business as usual.
Flogged 46-4, they had no pride in the jersey.
Glasby ran 39m. Pearce: one run, 9m and three missed tackles. Saifiti: 69m. Ponga: miles below his best.
Afterwards, Brown looked so perplexed and puzzled on the Super Saturday TV camera inside the Knights’ dressing room. It was a helpless look – and acceptance he’d lost the shed.
At full-time he didn’t even sit down with the players. It was just a 60-second debrief on his feet. No tongue lashing required. Off to the press conference, then the team bus for the long ride home.
The performance was so bad and so depressing that league Immortal and the club’s greatest player, Joey Johns, couldn’t watch.
“It was pretty bad so I turned it off,” he told me.
“That’s not how Newcastle teams play. I couldn’t believe what I was watching.
“Who knows what’s happening up there? They were playing for a finals spot. They had everything to play for. It was shocking.”
You have to feel for Knights fans in a city where the footy team means so much to them.
This is the home of the most parochial and passionate fan base in rugby league – hard, blue-collar workers who have stuck solid and kept turning up through tough times year after year. They deserve so much better.
Their heroes earn $1 million a year. Yet Ponga’s manager isn’t happy and demands $1.5 million. It would take the average Newcastle supporter more than 20 years to earn that amount of money.
Think back to Round 11 in late May and the night this football side flogged the Roosters 38-12.
Your columnist sat with their members that night and saw their pride and what it meant to them.
I text-messaged Mitchell Pearce yesterday morning: “It’s Buzz, mate. Could you please ring. Doing a story on last night and wanted to know if you had a message for the fans.” There was no reply. And that probably sums up the football club right now. They just don’t care.