{"id":774403,"date":"2026-07-02T14:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T14:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774403\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T14:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T14:05:16","slug":"nrlw-2026-sidney-taylor-stars-as-newcastle-knights-beat-cronulla-sharks-in-first-game-of-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774403\/","title":{"rendered":"NRLW 2026: Sidney Taylor stars as Newcastle Knights beat Cronulla Sharks in first game of season"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new star has arrived in the NRLW<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Knights<\/a> recruit Sidney Taylor, one of the many women who crossed from rugby sevens to the NRLW this year, had a stellar debut as Newcastle defeated Cronulla<\/a> 18-4 in the first game of the season on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sidney Taylor.\u00a0NRL Imagery<\/p>\n

The former Australian rugby sevens star had a huge impact at right centre, churning out a match-high 183 run metres from 16 carries and setting up a try as Newcastle took down Cronulla at Shark Park.<\/p>\n

Shanice Parker chalked up the first try of the season \u2013 and Taylor set it up.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old scooted onto a Kirra Dibb cut-out ball, hit the accelerator, drew Sharks winger Cassie Staples to create an overlap, and dished off the ball to Parker, who dived and scored in the 10th minute.<\/p>\n

Knights hooker Olivia Higgins is in awe of Taylor\u2019s attacking threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a natural ball-runner, as you can see, but she\u2019s an absolute weapon. She\u2019s taken to the game really well,\u201d Higgins said on Nine\u2019s post-game show.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we knew that with Shanice moving to the wing as well, I think they complement each other so good.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe [Taylor] looks very dangerous. Very impressed with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor jumped from rugby sevens to league via the 15-woman code.<\/p>\n

She debuted for the Wallaroos against Fiji in Canberra in May, before arriving at the Knights for a crack at the NRLW.<\/p>\n

She was a reserve for the Australian rugby sevens team at the Paris 2024 Olympics.<\/p>\n

She returned home with her sights set on becoming a mainstay of the Australian sevens team \u2013 but suffered an ACL rupture.<\/p>\n

Taylor and Sharks recruit Madison Ashby were sevens teammates in the Australian set-up. They shared a warm embrace at full-time on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

Dibb, Newcastle\u2019s five-eighth, said Taylor had made a striking impression since arriving in the Hunter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been watching her all pre-season, and she earned that jersey above and beyond,\u201d Dibb said on Nine\u2019s post-match show.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think she showed tonight that she really deserved that jersey and what she\u2019s going to do for our game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parker, Fane Finau and Simone Karpani bagged tries for Newcastle on Thursday night, while Rhiannon Byes was Cronulla\u2019s sole try-scorer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new star has arrived in the NRLW. Knights recruit Sidney Taylor, one of the many women who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-774403","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\/774403","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=774403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}