Sporting Declaration: Newcastle Knights fans savour the moment

"When you support a football team," Hornby wrote in his best-selling Fever Pitch. "Agony is the only currency that can purchase real ecstasy."

I reckon Newcastle Knights fans can relate to those sentiments, having endured more than their fair share of pain and suffering since the club's 1988 inception.

Having stoically banked that anguish, along with their tears of blood, week in, week out for years, they are now ready to splurge on jubilation, starting with tomorrow's do-or-die final against Canberra at McDonald Jones Stadium.

For the first time in what seems like an eternity, the Knights head into the play-offs with realistic expectations of doing some damage.

Newcastle haven't won a post-season match since 2013, and they haven't hosted a final since 2006.

They endured three wooden spoons between 2015-17, in amongst a seven-year exile in the finals wilderness.

And even when they did return to the play-offs, in 2020 and 2021, those games were away from home and played under COVID restrictions, and hence spectator numbers were vastly reduced.

So it's hardly surprising that the Turton Road turnstiles have been spinning so fast and furiously in recent weeks they may soon need to be replaced.

After so many lean years, it almost seems too good to be true for fans to be cheering on a team who, seemingly out of the blue, have won nine games in a row and finished the season proper with more tries than any other side in the NRL.

In the process, the Knights have attracted capacity crowds of 29,018 and 29,423 to their recent wins against South Sydney and Cronulla, and they will make it a hat-trick of sell-outs against Canberra tomorrow.

Their overall crowd average this season (21,312) is the third-best in their history, behind only 1990 (22,018) and 2006 (21,848).

And the thing about Newcastle fans is that while they are both staunch and parochial, they have never taken success for granted, because they understand it comes at a cost.

Since their foundation season, the Knights were always battling against the odds, and against rival clubs with far larger budgets.

Despite their precarious financial situation, they were able to win two premierships after unearthing a golden generation of local players, but it was a building process that took a decade.

From the outset, Knights supporters have been the most loyal in the NRL, but they are also realists.

They fondly remember the glory days but haven't forgotten the tumultuous times that followed. And now they are entitled to not just savour the moment, but to also feel confident about the future.

They've done all they can, and you would expect no less. Now it's up to the players.

As veteran centre Dane Gagai said this week: "This town has always been awesome, even during those tough years.

"To be on the opposite end, going into finals and hopefully giving them something to cheer about, it's only repaying what they've done for us."

BRODIE Jones is never going to steal the headlines, but for mine he rates as one of the real good-news stories as the Newcastle Knights prepare for their finals-series opener.

The utility forward has been named on an extended bench for Sunday's clash with Canberra at McDonald Jones Stadium and, while he is not expected to play, he may yet be chosen as 18th man, a role he has already filled this season.

"Even if I don't play, just to be part of it and hopefully help the boys win, that'd be pretty special," Jones said.

A Cessnock junior, the former Australian Schoolboys representative celebrated his 50th NRL game for Newcastle earlier this season.

The 25-year-old is an unashamed "bushie" who disappears to his family's Quorrobolong farm in the off-season and grew up dreaming of becoming a rodeo rider, not an NRL professional.

So the prospect of having to leave the Knights and perhaps join a club in the big smoke, or England, was understandably not his preferred option.

By mid-season, it was looking likely that Jones would be parting company with the Knights at season's end, but Lachlan Miller's decision to request a release to join Leeds Rhinos has freed up salary cap funds and a roster position.

The Knights are now close to confirming a one-year extension for Jones, which is surely a win-win for all parties.

History suggests that the Knights are at their strongest when they have a large contingent of local juniors.

From that perspective alone, it would have been a shame to see Jones, like Josh KIng and Zac Hosking, wearing the colours of a rival club.

As a former Knight told me recently, King and Hosking will never be superstars, but they perform the same role for their teams that Bill Peden and Paul Marquet did many years ago for Newcastle.

For every Kalyn Ponga and Andrew Johns, you need the blue-collar toilers who get their jobs done without fuss or fanfare.

If, in the bargain, those guys happen to be home-grown like Brodie Jones, then they're worth their weight in gold.

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