Special bond is priceless
THE decade-plus veterans of the Griffith University Colleges Knights have heard their critics grumbling about new faces, player payments and purchased premierships and they’ve had enough.
Tight five forwards Lesi Semi, Wayde Scott and Kerrod Martorella will play in their fifth GCDRU grand final in five years on Wednesday.
The trio are the heart and soul of the Knights club, having overcome down years where 40-0 thrashings were the weekly cost of playing for the Coast’s smallest rugby club.
They have grown as players with the club and helped foster a winning culture that attracts players and retains them like few others.
Talismanic lock Kerrod Martorella played his first game for the Knights in 2009 after moving down from Cairns to join the Breakers.
A decade later, with less hair and a tighter jersey, as hooker Wayde Scott is so quick to point out, he has witnessed an incredible transformation in his club.
“I know how some of these other clubs are feeling,” Martorella said.
“Back when I first started it was the same thing, we were losing 40-0 for seasons straight. We could not win a game for five or six years.
“But we had such a good culture off the field that guys from other clubs started coming down because they loved us.
“We were so lucky because in 2018 we worked so hard to beat that Surfers team who had been dominant for three years in a row.
“When we got that win a core group of first graders stuck around and we’ve built on that ever since.”
Martorella estimates that 80 per cent of the club had signed on before the Knights snapped their 22-year premiership drought in 2018.
The players who arrived since have been recruited by mates and relatives - not with fuel concessions or paper bag payouts.
“I take that to heart a bit,” Martorella said.
“I’ve been here all along and I can vouch that no gets paid here, no one gets incentives.
“I’ve heard the one-liners in opposition scrums, that ‘ You guys are only winning because youse are getting paid,’ which is just the biggest laugh ever.
“Everyone down here has a connection through a friend or an Old Boy or because they’ve known a coach.
“The new faces this year have been great too but the majority of this playing group has been here greater than three years.”
Hooker Wayde Scott will wrap up his 14th season at the club packing down alongside 13-year veteran prop Lesi Semi in the grand final.
He said the chance to send out retiring vice-captain and flanker Tysen Urry (five years with Knights), and others considering retirement like Seb Gallagher (five years), was greater motivation than correcting the club’s one-fromfour grand final record or silencing the club’s critics.