Knights legend Marc Glanville has urged Newcastle's players and fans to give the Dolphins a welcome akin to the one the Broncos received close to 35 years ago when they first came to town.
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The Knights host the Dolphins for the Redcliffe-based side's first away game and inaugural meeting between the two clubs at McDonald Jones Stadium on Friday night.
The anticipation for the historic clash is building with more than 20,000 expected to attend the 6pm match.
In a remarkable bit of history, Wayne Bennett will again return to the Broadmeadow ground as the coach of an undefeated new franchise in their maiden season, which he did back in 1988 with the Broncos.
In round six that season, the Knights and Broncos - both in their inaugural campaigns - met for their first NSWRL clash at the then-named Newcastle International Sports Centre on Sunday, April 10. The official attendance was 30,220, but Glanville, who came off the bench in the game, reckons it was thousands more.
"You always knew when there was going to be a big crowd because of when the under-23s were playing [beforehand]," he said, reflecting on the occasion with the Newcastle Herald this week.
"There would have been 10 or 15,000 when the 23s were playing. They ended up with the biggest crowd, it might still be the record. (The largest official attendance is 32,642 vs Manly in 1995)
"It was unbelievable. They were jammed in.
"They said there were 30,000, but it was probably close to 40,000, really."
Glanville, who played 11 games for the Dragons before 188 for Newcastle, culminating with the 1997 grand final victory, recalled a huge build up around town before facing the Broncos in '88.
Brisbane's halves were Queensland icons Wally Lewis and Allan Langer and they had a host of other representative players.
Ahead of the match, the Knights got thousands of one-off match shirts produced for supporters to buy.
"Leading up to the game it was pretty massive, someone got 'Wally Buster' T-shirts made," Glanville recalled.
"They sold out of them. I can't remember how many they got made. [Brisbane] almost had a Queensland Origin team. We did our best, we scored a couple of tries but we were probably no match for them, really. We tried to belt shit out of them as much as we could though."
The community interest in Friday's game is unlikely to reach the fever pitch of the famous '88 clash, which Brisbane won 24-10, but Glanville believes there will be plenty of intrigue after the Dolphins' promising start.
"They're two from two, they've started pretty well. I reckon there will be a fair bit of interest actually," he said.
"First home game, and a good win last week which will get plenty of people there. Obviously we've got a fair few out, but it will be backs to the wall for our blokes."
Asked if the current side could take anything out of that '88 match, Glanville said "they probably can."
"The fact it's a new team and they've won two from two already," he said.
"We can go down in the record books as the first team to beat the Dolphins.
"When we played, the crowd started singing: 'Wally sucks! Wally sucks!"
The Knights have a decent record hosting expansion sides for the first time.
They had to wait until the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Adelaide's second seasons to play them at home, defeating the Titans (13-12) in 2008, Storm (27-26) in 1999 and Rams (34-20) in 1998.
They beat South Queensland Crushers (22-6) in their second campaign in 1996, and smashed the Western Reds (54-14), Cowboys (44-14) and Warriors (48-6) in their inaugural 1995 seasons.
They lost to the original Gold Coast franchise, the Chargers (9-0), in 1988.
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