And Knights CEO Phil Gardner has vowed to make the stadium a no-go-zone for Eels fans, declaring: "This is our first opportunity ever to have just our own Knights fans at a game baying for Parramatta's blood.

"Won't it be great that Parramatta turn up to play and there is not a blue and yellow flag anywhere. If they score a try, you'll hear a pin-drop."

Under a relaxation of the COVID-19 bio-security regulations involving crowd numbers announced more than a week ago, it's expected somewhere between 7,000 to 8000 fans will be allowed to watch the clash against the Eels.

The vast majority of those will be members with the remainder to be shared around the club's corporate supporters. A total of 4801 members pledged their fees this season while a further 1540 committed to next year. The club handed back 450 refunds.

"All the tickets we've got are going to go to our people and that will be the same for our following game at home against the Bulldogs," Gardner revealed.

"There will be no general admission tickets sold for the two games. We have to look after the people who have stood by us. We want to reward those committed fans.

"They are the heart and soul of the club. They have stood by us when they didn't have to because they had the option of taking a refund so we want to look after them in this way.

"It will be a special atmosphere. There'll be 7000 plus Novocastrians baying for the Eels' blood. A sea of only red and blue and they'll be those people who are most connected to our club."

Gardner said the number of corporates to be allowed into the stadium is yet to be determined.

"We haven't yet got the number that we are allowed to have in the corporate areas but once we get that and we add the 6500 members, we will pretty much be at 25 percent of capacity," he said.

"They limit the number on the hill for us due to fire and other safety issues so my understanding is the actual capacity is now closer to 28,000 than 30,000.

"We'll be meeting with NSW Venues to thrash all that out. We don't want to be selling tickets on the day because we have to get everyone queued and get them in with all the social distancing protocols in place for where they will sit and all those sorts of things."

Injured Knights utility star Connor Watson wants to re-sign with the club and the Knights are very keen for him to stay but getting a deal done is proving a little more difficult than was hoped.

We're hearing the Knights offer and Watson's asking price are currently a fair way apart with negotiations moving along slowly.

The Knights cap position for 2021, even with several players coming off contract at the end of this season, is not flash with uncertainty over what the actual overall salary cap figure will be not helping the cause.

Knights prop David Klemmer says he will be sticking by his manager Isaac Moses even if he fails in his bid to have his deregistration as a player agent by the NRL overturned.

"I'll be sticking by him and his company no matter what happens," Klemmer told us. "Isaac has always done good by me and my family and that's all I can judge him on."

Moses currently has a big influence at the Knights, managing not only Klemmer but also coach Adam O'Brien and six other players - Kurt Mann, Hymel Hunt, Tautau Moga, Gehamat Shibasaki, Enari Tuala and Andrew McCullough.

Fringe Knights players who have been in the bubble, training just as hard as the stars have been but without the reward of getting a game at the end of each week, will finally get some match fitness today.

They will fly to Townsville with the NRL squad and play in a nine-a-side shortened match against the Cowboys' leftovers prior to the top grade game.

There is nothing wrong with showing some passion in the heat of battle but Adam O'Brien admits he went way over the top in the coaches' box at Gosford during his side's last start win over the Brisbane Broncos.

The Knights coach felt compelled to ring his mother and apologise and admits he was "embarrassed and devastated" after seeing vision of himself hurling a plastic water bottle onto the floor in anger following a second half mistake.

The sight of him losing the plot momentarily was reminiscent of some of his former mentor Craig Bellamy's antics in the Melbourne Storm box during games over the years.

O'Brien was still struggling with it when we brought it up with him earlier this week.

"It was embarrassing - I'm devastated by it," he said.

"I'm just so embarrassed and after seeing it, that's a long, long way from the example I'm trying to set.

"I'm passionate and competitive but that's not how I should be conveying it. I need the players to handle pressure a whole lot better than what I showed there. I've got to learn from it."

O'Brien is the type of coach who wears his heart on his sleeve, a trait he inherited from his father rather than anything picked up from Bellamy. And he says he's not about to completely change.

"At the end of the day, I've still got to be me," he said. "It helps me coach better when I'm me and I'm in the game. If I was there to be fluffy and all that, that wouldn't be me and I wouldn't coach well.

"But at the same time, kids watching don't need to be seeing me losing it in the moment either.

"I'll always fire up a bit because that's the way I am but the visual of actually smashing something on the ground - I don't want to do that.

"I can't say that I won't be passionate about my job for the rest of the year because I'm going to be but I needed to handle that situation better, that's for sure."

While many Knights fans, who were critical of former coach Nathan Brown for not showing enough emotion during games, won't have a problem with O'Brien's show of passion, there was at least one person who wasn't happy with the vision.

O'Brien's mother was on the phone to his wife Sharyn when it was replayed.

"Mum wasn't happy," he said. "She was speaking to Sharyn at the time and said 'tell him not to do that'. The next day I rang her and apologised."

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