Michael Crawley has worked as an assistant coach at the Raiders, Knights and Cowboys as well as a coaching consultant with the Dragons.

The fans in our game are people trying to make their way through life a day at a time.

Last Friday night after the win over the Rabbitohs, every Knights player who had a microphone shoved in their face and was asked about the result mentioned the fans and how they had stuck by them. Right there, the Newcastle season began to make sense; they had found their ‘Why.’

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When Adam O’Brien was handed a cardboard box and asked to return his keys, the locals in Newcastle figured it was just another grim chapter of the same old Knights routine. Another false dawn, another review, and another roster left picking up the pieces.

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Lucas pushing for comeback against Wahs | 02:49

This is a club built on Allan McMahon’s DNA, where the jersey has to mean more than a contract, and the recruitment filter runs on three simple rules: Tackle, Tough, and Tomorrows. Novacastrians don’t demand false hope or a guaranteed top-four finish; they just want hard work, application, and a team that refuses to quit.

Justin Holbrook walked in as an old boy who had chewed some of the same dirt. He had done time in the trenches and knew there was no magic fix. He needed to connect his squad and bring back the ‘touch one of us, and you get the lot’ mentality from the formative years. Holbrook is a tricky one; he plays up his innocent ‘oh golly gosh’ routine for the cameras, but there is a ruthless streak hiding behind that friendly smile.

Wayne Bennett’s Souths arrived earlier that night carrying a genuine sense of destiny, stacked with expectation, a fanatical crowd, and a lineup featuring Latrell Mitchell, Cody Walker, Cameron Murray, and big David Fifita. They were primed to be the only side from the bottom half of the eight with any real business in September.

The script was written, but somebody forgot to deliver the draft to the Knights dressing room.

After crawling out of 2025 with a wooden spoon and limping into these finals with a battered pack carrying a rookie up front, the Knights were expected to pack their bags early.

Instead, they charged through the smoke and tore the joint apart. Souths simply couldn’t handle the relentless Knights intensity, and when Cody Walker hobbled off, so did their chances.

Whatever Holbrook said to his team before kick-off, it worked. Selling belief is what good coaches are actually there for. Too many sit in a press conference blaming the roster for lacking intensity. Well, if preparing a team to play isn’t the coach’s job, whose is it? That is why Holbrook is right in the conversation for coach of the year. The belief he has built in just one year, if he could bottle it up, the Hunter would have another fortune in exports heading out of the harbour.

Under Holbrook, that working-class steel city culture turned completely from last season’s gloom into sunshine, driven by a squad that genuinely likes each other and refuses to take a backward step. Yet another brick in the wall of ‘Why.’

Sure, Newcastle have their very own superstar in Kalyn Ponga, but on Friday night, it was two cranky old bastards who should know better that turned up in Hunter coal hi-vis work gear to crash what was supposed to be a swish black-tie Rabbitohs party.

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Knights coach Justin Holbrook.Source: Getty Images

Dane Gagai and Tyson Frizell used every single one of their six hundred-plus career games to not only go hunting rabbits, but to squeeze the life right out of them.

Gagai didn’t waste any time sending a message. Anyone watching ‘Trellvision’ all week would have seen the highlight reels and figured the safest play was flashing a polite smile, calling him ‘buddy,’ and trying desperately not to poke the bear. Not Gags. He walked onto Allianz Stadium genuinely believing he could take down the main man, sparking an early fiery exchange right in front of the interchange bench. The cameras caught Latrell’s eyes on the very next tackle, and plenty of parents watching made the choice right there: best get the kids to bed, this could get nasty.

Up in the Hunter Valley, tough people are commonplace. After enduring a wooden spoon last year and turning up week after week to watch their team struggle, these fans recognise dirt underneath the fingernails better than anyone. They can smell a show pony a mile away, and that’s why they have backed this side in numbers all season. The players can genuinely sense that fierce local pride, giving them that unspoken motivation where the last thing they ever want to do is let these people down again.

Holbrook on contentious Bunnies no-try | 05:57

And Frizell? When you look at the team sheets before kick-off, with the Souths middle rolling out Keaon Koloamatangi, Tatola, Murray, and Brandon Smith, you’d be right thinking a car crash was coming. Instead, Frizell rolled his sleeves up and went to work, punishing Souths with 63 post-contact metres, before finally coming off late to ice a tight hamstring.

With Frizell putting his future on hold until the dust settles on September, and with Gagai heading north to Brisbane next year, these two aren’t worried about long-term masterplans. They are playing like men trying to squeeze every last drop out of a closing window.

They fought one monster and put it in the dirt. But the NRL doesn’t let you catch your breath.

Now, after watching the Warriors tighten their grip too much across the ditch and get run down by the Dolphins, paying the price for taking easy two-pointers and losing the flow of points that built scoreboard pressure all season, the road gets even steeper.

The Knights have to pack their bags and head to Auckland into another do-or-die furnace, missing a stack of stars. When you win, the bumps never hurt as much, and after rolling Souths, the belief in that locker room isn’t hope anymore. It’s absolute conviction.

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Every pundit in the country is writing them off again. But the Warriors just showed against the Dolphins that when the white-hot heat of expectation lands on them, that polished machine can fracture.

The Wahs will start favourites, and they should. But if they think Newcastle is heading across the ditch to make up the numbers after the war they just survived, they’re about to find out the hard way.

In life, we all need our ‘Why’— the reason we don’t quit when the weight gets too heavy. For the blokes in the stands, it’s the early alarm, the double shifts, and the simple pride of showing up. For a footy team, running out busted and bruised isn’t about the money or the flashing lights; the real ‘Why’ is about identity.

Holbrook has tethered these players and their ‘Why’ straight to their families, their town, and each other. When you are playing for people who know what it means to bleed for a dollar, you become plain hard to beat.

Sunday arvo, Eden Park – The Wahs v The ‘Why’s