Knights head of pathways Michael Dobson hopes "streamlining" how Newcastle's teams play and function will help prepare the next generation to graduate to the NRL squad.
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In his first interview since arriving at the Knights five weeks ago, Dobson - a replacement for Garth Brennan - opened up on the state of the club's junior and lower-grade system, his focus and the club's desire to have a "core nucleus" of local juniors in the NRL side.
A Newcastle Knight in 2014 when he made six appearances towards the end of his 285-game career, Dobson has returned to the club after five years working in pathways at Queensland Cup club Wynnum-Manly.
After getting his feet under the desk and spending plenty of hours on the ground, the 36-year-old former playmaker told the Newcastle Herald his main brief was to ensure the practices in place at NRL level filter through the club's development system.
"The big thing that we want to focus on is streamlining everything from the NRL down," he said.
"Making sure we're teaching our kids exactly what we want a Newcastle player to look like once they get to the NRL.
"So that Adam [O'Brien] and the coaching staff there aren't rehashing on things that are very basic. They can just sharpen their tools.
"We've got to make sure we're building that into the pathways, what they want, so it's streamlined - courses are the same, we're coaching the same sort of structure, same terminology of plays."
Newcastle's junior development system came into sharp focus in 2022 after a number of locals began having an impact in the top grade at other NRL clubs. The Knights also only debuted two players who had been in their system prior to last season, one by virtue of circumstance.
But Dobson defended the club's pathway system.
"There's been a lot of people that have done some really good things within that space for a number of years now," he said.
"You've just got to look at the teams this year: SG Ball finished second and got knocked out in the prelim [fina], Jersey Flegg made the grand final and probably should have won, our Tarsha Gale had a really good year and then the NRLW won the comp," Dobson said.
"We're in a pretty good position. We can obviously get a whole heap better, but certainly there's a lot of positives to look at from our pathways, a lot of good kids coming through.
"If we tweak a few things, hopefully we can be a lot more successful with players that kick on to hopefully be NRL and NRLW players."
Novocastrians Zac Hosking (Brisbane) and Grant Anderson (Melbourne) made NRL debuts at other clubs last season, while Hunter products Josh King (Melbourne) and Hudson Young (Canberra) began hitting their stride elsewhere as well. Jock Madden has also just joined Brisbane.
Dobson said it was enviable that some players would go on to excel elsewhere, but the club was focused on retaining its best talent.
"We never like seeing players pop up at other clubs that have come from within your system," he said.
"But being such a big junior base, there are going to be players that do pop up at other clubs.
"You can't keep them all, unfortunately. But we've got to make sure we're identifying and not losing the ones we don't want to lose."
Penrith are the benchmark for developing talent and the Knights share similarities to the reigning NRL premiers in terms of a big regional catchment area.
But Dobson said while Penrith were leading the way, they were enjoying the fruits of a rare bunch of talent that has come through their system together.
"Penrith have that junior base and it was coming through for a long time," he said.
"We've got a similar sort of junior base, but they certainly haven't had the production line coming through every year.
"It goes in cycles and they're in a really good cycle at the moment where they've got a lot of local kids, and that's got to be our focus to get to where they are because if you do have a good core nucleus of local players you can build around it certainly helps your NRL squad long term."
With a talented group that almost toppled the Panthers in the Jersey Flegg grand final last season, Dobson said the club was focused on nurturing the emerging players.
"That's got to be the focus from within our pathways," he said.
"To make sure we get kids coming through our system and debuting so we don't have to go and out and buy people.
"That's a big focus for us now; to try and get as many kids out of our pathways to go on and be the core nucleus of the NRL squad.
"But they've got a lot of hard work ahead of them before they're going to get to that stage."
With more than 250 players in the club's system, Dobson and his staff have a big job to ensure the cream rises.
"There's a lot of kids within the pathway that we're looking after," he said. "There's juniors within our system training every night, basically, at the club and around Newcastle.
"And then you've got the kids that you don't want to be missing that are going to be coming into that system as 15, 16 year olds.
"It's a big operation and a lot of hard work goes into it through a lot of staff members."
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