{"id":99331,"date":"2025-08-27T09:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/99331\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T09:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:33:10","slug":"nrl-obrien-departs-knights-after-wretched-2025-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/99331\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL: O’Brien departs Knights after wretched 2025 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam O’Brien has become the second NRL coaching casualty in the space of a week after walking away from the final two years of his contract with Newcastle. <\/p>\n

Speculation the end was near for O’Brien intensified after Sunday’s 46-12 home loss to Brisbane, with the Knights board meeting on Tuesday night to discuss his position.<\/p>\n

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After Newcastle cancelled Wednesday’s player media commitments, O’Brien informed the Knights squad he was moving on.<\/p>\n

O’Brien is expected to see out the last two games of the season – against Cronulla and Parramatta.<\/p>\n

The 47-year-old, who guided the Knights to finals in four of his six seasons in charge, leaves Newcastle in 16th spot and needing a win in their last two matches to avoid the wooden spoon. <\/p>\n

O’Brien’s reign at Newcastle promised plenty but the club has been unable to make the step up and become a genuine title threat, before falling completely off the pace this year.<\/p>\n

That situation has not been helped by a raft of injuries nor O’Brien’s rotating cast of playmakers. <\/p>\n

Newcastle coach Adam O’Brien.\u00a0Photo by Ian Hitchcock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Conjecture over Kalyn Ponga’s future dominated headlines in the second half of 2025.<\/p>\n

The Knights have also agreed to pay Parramatta five-eighth Dylan Brown an eye-watering $14 million across the next 10 seasons, starting in 2026. <\/p>\n

Newcastle’s attacking coach Blake Green looms as the most likely replacement for O’Brien.<\/p>\n

Green is highly rated by many at Newcastle, but counting against him is the fact the Knights have scored almost 100 points less than any other team this year.<\/p>\n

Beyond Green, Justin Holbrook, Brad Arthur and Willie Peters loom as other options.<\/p>\n

Arthur agreed to a new deal with Leeds in the English Super League this month, keeping him at the club until the end of 2026.<\/p>\n

At the time of the new deal, Rhinos CEO Ian Blease labelled Arthur “a man of his word”.<\/p>\n

Peters is also coaching in England at Hull KR and had been linked to a possible job at Wests Tigers before Benji Marshall’s team’s late-season resurgence.<\/p>\n

Holbrook is currently working as an assistant under Trent Robinson at the Sydney Roosters after being cut by the Titans in 2023.<\/p>\n

O’Brien’s exit comes just days after Des Hasler became the first coach to go this year, after the Titans announced Josh Hannay would replace him in 2026.<\/p>\n

Hannay had largely been considered the best coach-in-waiting, but the Titans’ decision to move first has taken the Cronulla assistant off the table. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adam O’Brien has become the second NRL coaching casualty in the space of a week after walking away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-99331","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\/99331","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=99331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}