{"id":238671,"date":"2025-10-24T23:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T23:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/238671\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T23:37:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T23:37:09","slug":"newcastle-knights-land-union-prospect-on-four-year-contract-nrl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/238671\/","title":{"rendered":"Newcastle Knights land union prospect on four-year contract – NRL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Newcastle Knights<\/a> have made a major signing coup, landing one of the best rugby union prospects from across the ditch.<\/p>\n

Continuing to rebuild their roster in both the NRL<\/a> level and in the lower grades, the Knights have turned their attention to players outside of Australia<\/a> and in the 15-man code.<\/p>\n

This has seen them sign highly-touted prospect Tom Perkins to a four-year contract after he captained the famed Nelson College 1st XV and represented the Under-18s New Zealand<\/a> Schools side against Australia<\/a>, per\u00a0Nelson App.<\/a><\/p>\n

It is understood that he was discovered by the club’s Head of Recruitment, Peter O’Sullivan, after impressing in a pre-season rugby union match earlier in the year, in April.<\/p>\n

The latest New Zealand<\/a> prospect to make the switch to rugby league, Perkins’ move to the 13-man code follows the signings of Harry Inch<\/a> to the New Zealand Warriors<\/a> and Saumaki Saumaki<\/a> to the South Sydney Rabbitohs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was presented with an awesome offer which was hard to resist. It was compelling,” he told the publication.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came home from playing against Australia<\/a> this month and had a few decisions to make. University was definitely something I wanted to prioritise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe school was announcing the awarding of scholarships to New Zealand<\/a> universities and I had been lucky to get one to Otago.<\/p>\n

“As I was going up to the stage, our careers lady said Tom won’t be accepting that as he is going to rugby league<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t really consider moving to league at all back then. I had my head down concentrating on college rugby.<\/p>\n

“I had moved from lock to No.8 and my aim was to make the New Zealand<\/a> Schools side. I just wanted to put all my energy into that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Newcastle Knights have made a major signing coup, landing one of the best rugby union prospects from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-238671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}