{"id":26619,"date":"2025-07-28T04:17:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T04:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/26619\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T04:17:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T04:17:10","slug":"nrl-news-2025-andrew-johns-plea-to-newcastle-knights-ceo-peter-parr-junior-academy-pathways-exclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/26619\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2025, Andrew Johns plea to Newcastle Knights CEO Peter Parr, junior academy pathways, exclusive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newcastle<\/a> icon Andrew Johns<\/a> wants the club’s incoming chief executive officer to prioritise implementing academies in the wider Hunter region to stop promising juniors leaving to join rival NRL<\/a> teams.<\/p>\n

Experienced administrator Peter Parr will take the chair from November 1 and will have a long list to work through when his feet hit the ground.<\/p>\n

The Knights are reportedly on the verge of sacking coach Adam O’Brien, while the NRL team fights to avoid a wooden spoon and the future of superstar fullback Kalyn Ponga remains a hot topic of conversation.<\/p>\n

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Parr was working with the Cowboys when they won the 2015 NRL premiership and has also worked with the NSW Blues State of Origin side.<\/p>\n

Johns is a fan of the appointment.<\/p>\n

\"Peter<\/p>\n

Incoming Knights boss Peter Parr.\u00a0Nine<\/p>\n

“He knows the fabric of Newcastle, a rugby league guy, so I think it is a really good appointment,” he told Wide World of Sports’ Immortal Behaviour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I think he is (the one to do it), for sure. It’s a big job, they’ve got to rebuild the club.”<\/p>\n

In an interview with News Corp over the weekend Parr said one of his priorities will be trying to sign Ponga to a fresh contract before he hits the open market in November next year.<\/p>\n

The gun No.1 has committed to seeing out his current deal<\/a>, which runs to the end of 2027, but will be a key target for both expansion teams – as well as rugby union and other NRL clubs – after that.<\/p>\n

Watch the 2025 NRL premiership live and free on Nine and 9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Johns says there is a much more pressing issue which Parr needs to address.<\/p>\n

Johns has been vocal this season about Newcastle’s lack of quality local players, and the fact the club hasn’t produced a good halfback since he finished almost two decades ago.<\/p>\n

Newcastle recently lost young five-eighth Cooper Votano to the Storm.<\/p>\n

Johns wants Parr to look at what Phil Gould did at Penrith in shoring up the junior systems, which resulted in huge success for the NRL team years later.<\/p>\n

“The first job is to look at the pathways and work out why there is a blockage, or something is broken within the club, where we’re not producing certain players to play a certain style,” Johns said.<\/p>\n

“Whether it’s the coaching of juniors, or how they are identifying talent… it looks like the Knights are going to go through a rebuild again, and they’ve got to build from within.<\/p>\n

“It’s just reality that the Knights can’t compete with the bigger clubs, the real powerful clubs, and now because they’re down the bottom (of the ladder) to buy a marquee player you’re going to have to pay overs.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got to build from within, we’ve got to get these juniors. I would love to see academies open up up at Forster, or Taree, so much talent up there.<\/p>\n

\"Fletcher<\/p>\n

Fletcher Sharpe and Kalyn Ponga of the Knights.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“(Get) the talented kids educated up there so they’re not in a car for two hours, two or three times a week. We need to make sure… if they are playing rugby league and they’re gifted, that they want to play for the Knights.<\/p>\n

“We get them in a system, we coach them a certain way, like Penrith have, so when they lose a superstar the next player comes in.”<\/p>\n

The Knights have suffered a horror injury toll this season with Ponga and fellow star fullback Fletcher Sharpe already sidelined for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n

They’ve won only six of 19 games this season and sit 15th on the ladder with six rounds remaining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newcastle icon Andrew Johns wants the club’s incoming chief executive officer to prioritise implementing academies in the wider…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-26619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26619","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=26619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}