Do the Newcastle Knights have the capability of finding the next generation of rugby league heroes?

But for some, the hard work is just beginning. Indeed, while most of the attention will be on superstars like Latrell Mitchell, James Tedesco and Millie Boyle in the NRL and NRLW, across the Hunter a series of scouts, player agents and coaches will be casting their eyes over junior football fields, hoping to find the superstars of tomorrow.

Although looking for the next generation of talent is as old as the game itself, in recent years the topic has been thrown firmly back into the spotlight. Following Penrith's dominance of the NRL over the past three years - built largely on the back of their production line of excellent local juniors - words like "development" and "pathways" have seemingly become rugby league buzzwords, even if most punters don't quite know the specifics of what goes into them.

And while there's no foolproof formula for creating NRL superstars, given the club's success in recent years, Penrith's $4 million model of identifying, developing and recruiting young players has been largely accepted as the gold standard when it comes to producing the next generation of superstars.

So, just how have they produced the likes of Nathan Cleary, Jarome Luai and Brian To'o, just to name a few?

The secret, it seems, starts off with hard work.

At a grassroots level, every week a team of around 10 volunteers will watch anywhere between three and nine games of footy in the Penrith district's junior league competitions, from under 12s all the way through to under 18s.

From this, a series of tips, reports and other notes are filed into the mother of all computer databases, which club officials say includes the names of all of the superstars to have come out of the Penrith district over the past 20 years.

This information is assessed and debated at monthly meetings. And while trials still play a role in team selections for Penrith's junior rep teams, club officials say the more holistic approach helps the Panthers truly identify the best kids in the area.

And, it's only half the story. While Penrith might boast one of the largest junior nurseries in the country, back in 2012, with Phil Gould at the helm, the club decided to expand its catchment area, moving beyond the Great Dividing Range into the state's Central West.

But instead of just cherry-picking the best young kids from the bush, like many clubs had done before, the Panthers invested time and effort into building connections with local communities in places like Dubbo, Forbes, Parkes, Bathurst and Orange, firstly by putting on regular clinics, decking kids out in Panthers gear and then setting up academies in these regional areas. In recent seasons, Penrith has also hosted an annual NRL game in Bathurst.

These structures have of course been complimented by effective coaching, mentorship and spot-on talent identification. And for Penrith, the proof is in the pudding. Out of their 2021 grand final-winning 17, no less than 12 were either local juniors or came through the club's junior development pathways.

While Penrith's system is the toast of the rugby league world, they're not necessarily reinventing the wheel. Long before Penrith's superstar production line, the Newcastle Knights had their very own football factory.

Indeed, just as Penrith had 12 junior products in its grand final-winning team last year, the Knights' premiership winners of 1997 and 2001 contained 12 and 11 local juniors or development system products, respectively, with the likes of Paul Harragon, Bill Peden, Darren Albert, and Matthew and Andrew Johns going from local kids to grand final-winning heroes.

But while the fruits of that success were clear for everyone to see in 1997 and 2001, much of the foundations were laid in the preceding decade, with the Knights' development and coaching program.

"When the Knights started in 1988, they had a junior coaching base: David Waite, Allan McMahon set it up, a guy called Keith Onslow did a lot of the junior coaching and oversaw it all; a guy called Allan Bell [was part of it]," Andrew Johns said on Channel 9 last year.

"They had all these structures in place and philosophies about how the juniors should play. Very similar to Penrith, what Gus [Phil Gould] did. Five years after that, in the early to mid-90s, all these local juniors started coming through."

Keith Onslow worked in a number of development roles at the Knights between 1988 and 1995, and then again between 2008 and 2012.

While Onslow stresses that the junior development landscape has changed dramatically since his time with the Knights, he nevertheless sees some similarities between the Panthers' approach and that of the Knights in club's early days.

"What Penrith are doing is basically what Newcastle were doing 30 years ago," Onslow says. "They've gone over the mountains to Bathurst and Dubbo and they've got a great foothold there, as the Knights did with Group 21, Taree and places like that."

The Knights' approach very much focused on having boots on the ground in the local community and creating an all-encompassing network of eyes and ears that would help the club connect with as many kids, coaches and junior clubs as possible.

"Development, in its broadest term, is about increasing participation, intensifying interest and encompasses the different stages of progression, so more people are drawn into the program," Onslow says. "Broadening a mass participation and, in the Knights' case, a mass interest base."

While professional rugby league is a cut-throat, results-driven business, Onslow says the club took a far more holistic, grassroots approach when it came to junior development.

"One of the things we stressed to everybody was about striving to their highest level of participation. It wasn't always about playing in the NRL or the highest competition at the time - you were aspiring to be the best that you could possibly be, and that if you're going OK, the game at a particular level would find you."

Key to this were the club's skills programs, run at local schools, rugby league clubs and camps.

"Wherever we went, we taught the same things in the same sequence. So whether you went to a school over three or four weeks in their sport or PE program or you went to a club or a camp, the same lessons were taught in the same sequence and the message was consistent all the way through," Onslow says. "It was very simple: carry, catch, pass, tackle - over and over again."

While the methodical approach, devised from the skills work of the club's lower grade coaches David Waite and Allan Bell, was tried and tested, Onslow says that a sprinkling of stardust never went astray.

"If we went to a school for four sports or PE programs, at some stage we would get a Knights player at one of those days, just to add that extra little bit of interest to the program. A lot of the times we would try and link that with a player who had come through that local area."

During Onslow's time with the club, going out into schools and local junior clubs was integral to the Knights' approach of building an interconnected network of football enthusiasts. In fact, in terminology that wouldn't be out of place today, in 1991 the club wrote a paper called the '"Links and Pathways Program" that laid out how to link schools to local junior clubs, local junior clubs with senior clubs and then senior clubs with the NRL side.

While this approach certainly helped the club identify a few talented juniors, Onslow says the benefits of directly engaging with people went far beyond anything that happens on the pitch.

"Because we were out in the community having contact with 50,000-70,000 kids a year, we were actually selling the brand, so you're selling memberships, season tickets, merchandise and all those things by doing that."

While appealing to a mass audience is a key part of the strategy, for a club to find the next Andrew Johns, they also need to have the capacity and expertise to identify good young talent. The Knights had an extensive web of coaches and scouts who would keep their eye on any promising young players.

"We had a very good local and regional network," Onslow says. "There were a lot of good people in the system who had longstanding relationships with people right across the Valley, the [Central] Coast and up around the North Coast. It was done pretty well."

For a long time one of these people was Gary Payne, who in addition to serving as manager to junior Knights teams from 2006 to 2016, under the leadership of development officer Warren Smiles, was also the longstanding secretary at junior club Valentine-Eleebana.

"If I liked certain players I'd tell Warren and he'd get his senior staff, like Michael Hagan and others, to go and have a look and identify them that way."

Payne was in a good place to judge, given the slew of future NRL players he'd cast his eye over every weekend.

"Daniel Abraham came through the system there, Brett Finch, Clint Newton - a lot of good players came through Valentine."

Michael Ennis was another one: "He wanted it so bad. He wanted to play division one so he came to Valentine and trained the house down all the time."

As was another premiership-winning Knights forward. "Josh Perry came from Swansea. He was big and he was fast. He was basically unstoppable at junior level. Blokes like that pretty much stood out straight away."

These connections across the Hunter, Central Coast and Mid-North Coast helped the Knights choose those invited to their famous end-of-season trials, usually held in September, where anywhere from 60 to 80 young players would take part in weekend trials for the club's junior squads.

But to highlight the extensive nature of the network, as well as the Knights' efforts to ensure that no player slipped through the net, the club also held an annual six-to-eight-week program at Empire Park at Bar Beach in the off-season, whereby clubs in the local rugby league competition could nominate two or three young players who had otherwise missed out on invitations to the end-of-season trials.

"We would run a program at the end of the year for the local clubs and some terrific players came out of that. Billy Peden is the first one that comes to mind," Onslow says.

And if that wasn't enough, the Knights Knockout school competitions were also useful tools for uncovering talent.

"They were terrific for us," he says. "Blokes like Darren Albert, Matty Gidley come straight to mind. They came out of the school knockout; they weren't representative players as such, they played in the school comp and we identified them from there."

It might seem like a no-brainer, but there's no point having the best, interconnected system in the world if you don't know what you're looking for.

While plenty of kids have talent, it's difficult to know if the 14- or 15-year-old superstars will ultimately make it to the top grade, and clubs are bound to miss a few diamonds.

Despite the difficulties associated with assessing young footballers, but there are some markers they keep an eye on.

For Matt Lantry, a longtime Knights junior development and NSW Cup coach, who is currently leading the Maitland Pickers in the Newcastle Rugby League, there are a few useful indicators.

"Skills, are they skilful enough?; are they smart enough? Having an understanding of the game and that footy IQ is important; speed is another one, and not just 100-metre speed, but footy speed, having the ability to be explosive off the mark, move laterally; strength, your physical presence is important. You don't need to be throwing massive weights round the gym, but you just have to be strong in your own body."

Payne agrees with those fundamentals, but notes there was one other attribute he looked for in kids. "Toughness is probably the first thing, that's very critical to the game, because even if you're on the wing nowadays they still whack you pretty hard."

But to make it as a professional, all agree that you need more than just raw talent.

"When you're looking at or working with an individual, they've gotta love the game of rugby league, they've gotta love playing it," Lantry says. "If the passion's not there where they don't love the game or it's a bit of a chore, those individuals are really going to struggle to progress."

For Onslow, it was key to gain an insight into the personality and temperament of young players.

"It's really important to talk to them, it's really important to look them in the eye," he says. "I know on trial days, that was one of the reasons why the numbers were regulated, because you wanted to get around and talk to as many people as possible."

When asked if there were any players that he knew were going to make it based on their character alone, Onslow only needed one name.

"Buderus. Just give him a football jumper, it didn't which one, he was always going to play for you," he says. "He came to Newcastle as a half/five-eighth, played Australian schoolboys as a centre, I think he made his debut in grade as a fullback and then went on to become one of the greatest nines of all time. He was just a footballer."

But simply identifying good young talent and steady heads isn't enough. Every junior rugby league club is filled with stories of that talented teenager with all the promise in the world who gave the game away or fizzled out before lacing a boot in first grade.

There is a prevailing thought in junior sport that while you can uncover raw talent, you need to manufacture a superstar.

"There's no point having a great program if the standard of coaching or the coaches you have don't have the ability to deliver it," Lantry says.

Indeed, coaching is something that Newcastle halfback Luke Walsh credits with pushing along his development. After debuting for the Knights in 2007, the Wests Rosellas junior embarked on a 12-year professional career that saw him play more than 250 games in both the NRL and UK Super League.

"We had [long-time Knights junior coach and development officer] Laurie Clifton, and he was really key to me kicking on," Walsh says. "We had really good development coaches. Warren Smiles, he used to run all the junior stuff, he was really good."

Most agree that the key to good coaching in a club environment is having a consistent message and principles throughout the club.

"It's important to have a unified club system that is overarching of all grades, with the same terminology from top to bottom, similar standards, similar philosophies," Lantry says.

"What are your defensive philosophies? We don't give up our inside shoulder, third man into the tackle comes from the inside. From an offensive perspective, vision is one: play with your eyes, so that irrespective of what structure we have, we see things and we can make decisions.

"So you come up with three or four key things in the defensive component, three or four things in the offensive component, and then you drive that through the whole club, so that when a kid progresses from 17s to 19s, from 19s to 21s, then into NSW Cup and potentially NRL, he's got that system ingrained in him."

For Walsh, as a young halfback coming through the ranks at the Knights in the mid-2000s, he was blessed with the opportunity to learn from an immortal.

"We were pretty lucky. Obviously being at the Knights we had Joey, someone we all looked up to, and a few of us young fellas got to do some sessions with him. It was Joey, Kurt Gidley and a few other older lads, and that was really helpful," he says.

"When I had the opportunity I would just go to the training sessions and sit and watch him, and just try and copy pretty much everything he did. You'd just try and emulate it, take it back to your age group and put that into what you do on the weekend. It was pretty special, when I look back now. I got to learn from the best."

But just as coaching can be the making of a young player, it can also contribute to their breaking.

In recent years there has been a lot of commentary about how a number young creative players - in particular, halves - have struggled to break into or make an impact in the NRL, particularly since the introduction of the six-again rule.

The criticism is that kids these days are coached into playing overly structured football, thus shackling the young playmakers to systems and processes instead of giving them the freedom to be creative and react to the play as they see it.

"That's what Joey taught us: you've got to have structure to play unstructured," Walsh says. "What I mean by that is that you've got to have certain points on the field where you might attack a certain way and for the benefit of the team play structured, but you've got to have the ability to play eyes-up footy too, where if you see something you've got to take the opportunity.

"When I was younger, playing juniors, I just used to play eyes-up footy. I think for a lot of the young halves these days, it's very structured and they don't have the ability to adapt to playing what they see in front of them."

The question of where to find the next Joey Johns, or Buderus, or Gidley, comes at a particularly pertinent moment for the Knights. Following a disappointing season that has seen the club fall to 14th position on the ladder with just six wins from 21 games, attention has turned towards the club's young guns, and just how the Knights are identifying, recruiting and developing young talent.

The area was highlighted as one of high importance by the Wests Group upon taking over the Knights' NRL licence in 2017, with CEO Phil Gardner at the time saying "something we do want to do is become a development club again.

"A lot of the clubs have gone away from the development of players and have just become cherry pickers where they allow someone to develop players and just come along and make them an offer. That's not really the future of the Knights. We need to be a development club and invest in the development of kids."

Nathan Brown's tenure as coach saw a number of local juniors or development system products blooded in the NRL, with players such as Daniel and Jacob Saifiti, from the Central Coast, Wingham's Mitch Barnett and South Newcastle junior Lachlan Fitzgibbon among those to established themselves as regular first graders.

In more recent years, others like fellow South Newcastle junior Tex Hoy, Cessnock's Brodie Jones, Maitland product Pasami Saulo, the Central Coast's Bradman Best and Nabiac local Mat Croker have been among those to have progressed through the club's development system and into first grade.

In another good sign of things to come, the Knights' Jersey Flegg (under 21s) team is currently sitting second on the ladder, the SG Ball (under 19s) team finished the regular season in second place before being knocked out in the finals, and Knights junior Ethan Ferguson was recently selected in the Australian Schoolboys' team.

And while much of the talk around junior development focuses on homegrown talent, all NRL clubs acknowledge that to be competitive, you need a mix of local and imported players.

On this front, the Knights arguably signed the best young talent in the game when in 2016 they went in big for an untested Kalyn Ponga, who by that stage had played just two games in the NRL. Meanwhile, one of the club's rare shining lights this season has been English winger Dom Young, who the Knights signed as a 19-year-old and have since helped turn him into a valued first grader.

However, despite these successes, there is a feeling that not all is right on the development front.

Indeed, following the team's 42-6 loss to Penrith in round 14, coach Adam O'Brien alluded to junior development as one of the areas that needed improvement.

"We've got to get our pathways right, we've got to get our recruitment and retention right, we've got to get our training right, our game model - there's a fair few things," O'Brien said.

Taking it a step further, club great Andrew Johns has bemoaned the lack of local halves and spine players, with all of the club's first choice playmakers imported from either interstate or out of town.

The club has been active in trying to rectify the situation, hiring highly respected former Gold Coast Titans coach and former Knights junior development coach Garth Brennan as the head of pathways before the start of the season and bringing in Johns as a part-time consultant to work with not only NRL playmakers but also the club's juniors.

However, Brennan resigned from his position in June, just nine months into his role, amid concerns he wasn't on the "same page" as the club's hierarchy.

While it was reported that the club initially planned to combine the pathways role with that of NSW Cup coach and transition coach, newly appointed director of football Peter Parr told the Toohey's News podcast last week that the role of head of pathways will be a standalone position next year.

Asking around town, there is a feeling that the Knights have somewhat taken their eyes off the ball when it comes to cultivating and developing local talent in their own backyard over the past 10-15 years.

"I think over the course of time the Knights have waived over being a development-based club to being a recruitment-based club, back to a development club and then recruitment, and they've just not stayed staunch on what their belief is," Lantry says.

Lantry says the effects of moving away from development are felt far deeper.

"I think if anything's lacking at the Knights it might be that engagement with the junior participant and their families, because within the community I think there is a general feel that there are limited opportunities for local kids to progress through."

It was a sentiment shared by Walsh, who is currently playing for Central Newcastle in the local league competition.

"I think the Knights recruitment should look more into the Newcastle Rugby League, because there really is some good young talent running around in the comp. They probably just haven't had that opportunity."

In fact, local junior Zac Hosking (Brisbane Broncos) is among who recently spent time in the Real NRL (Newcastle) before making his NRL debut this season.

For this article, the Newcastle Herald approached the Knights to comment on the topics of junior development, pathways and their relevant strategies in these fields. The club did not provide anyone for comment

However, in his interview with Barry Toohey, Peter Parr addressed broader issues related to pathways. He said that while the goal was to get as many local juniors into the top grade as possible, in a professional business like the NRL, nothing could be guaranteed.

"If you are opening up opportunity for those guys, they're the ones that have got to take it. It's not a God-given right that you're a [local] junior that you can play for the Knights," Parr said.

"But what it's incumbent on for the Knights is that there is a pathways program in place that at least gives those players the opportunity, and I'm sure that if we get those pathways in a proper place, that we'll be providing opportunities for local players to come through."

Lantry notes that player development across the board has become more difficult in recent years.

"The standard of coaching is probably a challenge for us at a community level because everyone is so time-poor. The extensive network of volunteers that community sport once had is no longer there; the day of the volunteer is sadly disintegrating."

For Lantry, the byproduct of this is a growing number of rugby league players aged 12-15 lacking in fundamental skills. For example, some might be good athletes but can't catch and pass; others might struggle to effectively tackle.

To help fill what he saw as a gap in skills development, Lantry set up The Rugby League Academy, which offers training to young players, coaches and clubs alike.

While most development programs for NRL clubs start to cater for players around the age of 15, Lantry believes that's far too late.

"I might be a bit different to some, but I don't think we start our junior development programs early enough," he says. "You go and have a look at European soccer and other models. We're missing the boat. Their development programs start at the age of eight and nine, which is a little bit ridiculous, but if I was setting up an NRL club and pathways or development was my area, I would definitely look to start development programs from the age of 12."

But rather than closing it off to just the elite athletes, Lantry thinks a better approach would be to open up these development programs to all junior footballers, which he says would leave the game - as well as NRL clubs - in a better place both on and off the park.

"When you're engaging the majority of 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds in your region you're actually starting to build a relationship with that kid and with their family," he says. "So, for me, that is what's potentially missing from some NRL clubs."

In fact, connecting with local communities has been a key message of the Wests Group since they took control of the Knights in five years ago.

In outlining the club's ambition on the junior development front, in December 2017 CEO Phil Gardner said that in addition to paying greater attention to juniors in Newcastle and Maitland, the Knights were keen to expand their footprint.

"We want to be more engaged at every level with the junior development of the game. That will be a journey for us. We want to go up through Group 21 out to Tamworth and Port Macquarie," he said. "We cannot afford to let another Boyd Cordner or Greg Inglis slip through the net and go to another club."

Gardner doubled down on his ambition in an interview with the Knights' official podcast last year, saying: "We're representing everyone from Gosford to the Queensland border, everyone in the area should aspire to be a Knight."

Of course, other clubs have also been keen to invest in junior rugby league outside their traditional local nurseries.

In 2019 the Canterbury Bulldogs signed pathways development deals with Group 3 (from Forster to Kempsey) and Group 21 (from Greta-Branxton up to Murrurundi) rugby league associations, areas seen as traditional heartlands for the Knights.

The deals formalise the Bulldogs' presence in these areas, with the club investing in coaching, clinics and training, as well as providing pathways for talented juniors to play for Canterbury.

The Sydney Roosters struck up similar arrangements with rugby league authorities on the Central Coast - another area seen traditionally seen as part of the Knights' junior base.

"Years ago, the Knights viewed their catchment area as Group 3, Group 21, Maitland, Newcastle and the Central Coast," Lantry says. "So the Knights' catchment area has slowly shrunk to Maitland and Newcastle, which, for me, would be rather concerning that we've lost some key areas that sit directly on our border of Maitland and Newcastle."

NRL rivals have long appreciated the Hunter and surrounding area's strong rugby league pedigree, with famous names like Luke Burt, Greg Bird and Anthony Tupou among those to have signed with other clubs from underneath the Knights' noses.

And while any talented juniors from these areas could still sign for the Knights, or any other NRL club (with the payment of a development fee to the Bulldogs), perhaps more concerning from a Knights perspective is that with their investment, coaching clinics and boots on the ground, the Bulldogs (just like the Roosters on the Central Coast) will build connections with the local community and ultimately usurp the Knights in the hearts and minds of kids in those areas.

Several officials involved in junior rugby league in both Group 3 and Group 21 said that the Bulldogs have increased their popularity among local juniors over the past three years following the signing of their pathways development agreements.

Finding and signing the next Andrew Johns superstar in the Hunter Region to play for the Knights is going to be a bigger challenge than ever.