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"I'm probably reaping the benefits of how they exited last year," the former Melbourne and Roosters assistant said this week.

"I wouldn't say it's anything that I've brought. It's a a playing group who started two or three weeks before they had to. When I turned up here last year, they were already training.

"It wasn't me ringing them up telling them to get in there, they did it off their own backs.

"A lot of the credit has to go to those guys.

"But look, we're two games in. If we'd had a couple of losses, they mightn't like hanging around me too much. I don't know."

O'Brien might be selling himself short. To a man, Newcastle's players have described the 2020 pre-season as the toughest of their careers as the rookie coach - who signed a three-year deal at the end of last season - set about instilling physical and mental toughness that were seen all too rarely in the Nathan Brown era.

As skipper Mitchell Pearce said early in the pre-season: "We've got a super coach who has come from only knowing one style and that's a winning culture.

"That's why I've got full confidence in the coach.

"Credit to Browny, he did a really good job to get us to a certain level ... but we've come in with new ideas and new ideas are always great. It's a fresh look.

"One thing I can say about Adam from my first two weeks with him - he's highly professional, very hard working and he's a winner."

Nonetheless, Pearce also acknowledged, as O'Brien did this week, that last season's capitulation - when the Knights lost nine of their final 12 games to crash from fifth on the ladder to the ultimate position of 11th - has provided a powerful source of motivation.

"Whenever there's a change there's a rebound effect at the start," he said. "There's plenty of eager faces and everyone is competing really hard every day."

Memories of last season are still fresh in the mind of Test prop David Klemmer, who said before the season kicked off he had no intention of allowing history to repeat itself.

"For me, the bus trips coming home after getting flogged were something I'd never experienced before," Klemmer said.

"When I was back in Sydney, the drive home was 10 or 15 minutes.

"Here it's two or two-and-a-half hours on the bus, and it's not a nice journey back home. Those sort of things struck a chord for me."

Klemmer said "last year was probably a rollercoaster for us as a whole club", leaving his teammates to deal with an off-season of soul-searching.

"For me personally it was a big learning curve," he said. "We started off slowly, then we went on a good winning streak, but we just couldn't hang onto it.

"What we went through at the back end of the year, and how we ended up mentally, it was pretty disappointing. "No one wants to go through that again. The fans were disappointed and we don't want to dish that up for them again."

Having spent most of the pre-season vowing to develop a new hard edge, the Knights wasted no time in making their actions speak for themselves.

In the season-opener at McDonald Jones Stadium, they shut out the Warriors 20-0 - the first time Newcastle had kept an opponent scoreless in almost six years.

I wasn't aware of that [statistic]," O'Brien said. "That's great for these guys ... it is only one game but we only had to play one game today, so I think they'll be overjoyed when I let them know that stat."

Even more flattering for Newcastle was an admission from Warriors coach Stephen Kearney that his team had been "beaten up" physically and forced into errors.

But for Knights fans, the win was bittersweet. Any excitement was overshadowed by news that the NRL's second round would be played in locked stadiums, as coronavirus restrictions started to tighten.

Eight days later, Newcastle took on Wests Tigers in a ghost town known as Leichhardt Oval, and notched their second straight win, 42-24. Within 24 hours, the competition had been suspended, with Newcastle nicely placed as joint competition leaders, behind only Parramatta on for-and-against statistics.

For six weeks, the Knights and players at all other clubs were forced to keep fit in isolation, before they were cleared to resume training last week in groups of 10 or less.

This week, normal service resumed in preparation for the season re-starting on May 28. Newcastle's round-three opponents are Penrith on Sunday week, followed by Canberra the week later.

While the Knights have suffered two major injury blows, losing new hooker Jayden Brailey for the season to a knee reconstruction and back-rower Mitch Barnett indefinitely after neck surgery, O'Brien is supremely confident the rest of his troops are in good nick.

"While they were training in isolation we asked them to do a few tests and we're pretty happy with the results," O'Brien said. "I'm really confident that they're all in good shape, running wise. I'm happy that the running load is there, but it's the contact load we need to get."

And there should be no shortage of motivation. Not only have their two wins buoyed his players during the hiatus, but O'Brien says they recognise there will be a "higher purpose" when they return to the field.

"We understand the importance that where we sit in the community, we can change a lot for a lot of people," he said.

"We can bring some happiness with the way we play, but we can also set an example and show that we can get through this, if you stick to the protocols."