Newcastle Knights’ rise from cellar to finals means Justin Holbrook must be coach of the year
Opinion
Even before the weekend, there can’t have been much doubt about Justin Holbrook winning the coach of the year award.
Newcastle’s climb from the cellar to the finals is a credit to what Holbrook has done with substantially the same roster.
Almost every player has improved under Holbrook, who, having started his playing career at the Knights, clearly understands the unique characteristics of the place.
Individuals do their thing – Fletcher Sharpe’s 55-metre dummy half run on Sunday, beating six tacklers to score, is a season highlight – but a year ago, players like Sharpe, Dom Young, Greg Marzhew and many others were struggling, were making errors and were low on confidence.
Losing Dylan Brown and Dylan Lucas this month to season-ending injuries was meant to burst the Knights’ bubble, but they’ve kept moving forward.
Holbrook, who won Super League titles with St Helens and coached the Gold Coast to their single finals appearance in the past decade, is competing only with the Warriors’ Andrew Webster and the Dolphins’ Kristian Woolf for coach of the year (Wayne Bennett, who has got a lot out of the injury-hit Rabbitohs, is worth an honourable mention).
Considering Newcastle’s output relative to their on-paper strength, and his ability to turn average players into good ones, Holbook should be a shoo-in.
Why stupidity is the secret to success
At the other end of the scale, the 2025 coach of the year, Ricky Stuart, and premiership winner Michael Maguire have had the underperforming rosters of 2026.
They can’t have gone from geniuses to dunces just like that, can they?
Maguire bristled at questions about the Broncos’ effort in losing 40-6 to the Warriors on Saturday. He has a point. Reece Walsh also suffered a season-ending ankle injury during the game.
Rather than come off immediately, he saw an attacking opportunity, instinct took over, and he bolted away from the trainer. He caught the ball and, in his desperation, threw an intercept: six more points to the Wahs.
It was indicative of Walsh’s season: no lack of effort, just trying too hard to do too much.
Maguire wasn’t yielding any unifying explanation for Brisbane’s season, but captain Patrick Carrigan was. What’s wrong with the Broncos, Pat? “Stupidity.”
The elusive secret, then: how to coach stupidity out of rugby league players.
More is more for NRL
Peter V’landys keeps pressing for a third-place play-off game, offering fabulous bribes to the teams. He seems to be serious.
I can understand his motivation: as soon as the rugby league season peters out, no matter how over-long it has been, we miss it instantly and want more.
The English Premier League, the envy of every sporting administrator, recommences this weekend after barely a two-month off-season, or no off-season at all if you factor in the World Cup.
V’landys would clearly like 365 days of rugby league.
Growth is so intoxicating when you’re on a winning run, it can be easy to forget the golden rule of showbiz: leave ’em wanting more.
Forget the have-nots, inequality is king
With few high-stakes matches this coming weekend and Souths v Warriors the only one featuring two top-eight teams, the 2026 season dribbles away to a race between the Roosters, Warriors and Panthers.
The NRL has for so long been locked into an imbalance between haves and have-nots; it’s worth wondering how different it would look if there were no salary cap at all.
A rare review of the cap was announced in 2025, but little came of it. If anything, with the PNG Chiefs venture being too big to fail and the Bears needing leg-ups, the cap is achieving less and less of its equalising purpose. Is there any point to it?
If the NRL had no salary cap, would it look much different? Would the best-resourced clubs not still win all the titles? Would the majority of supporters not be left to dream big of an eighth-place finish?
The real driver is not what would make a stronger and fairer competition; it’s what makes good business sense.
And if the world’s big sports leagues are any guide, with no salary caps and monopolies for the rich, then we might understand the NRL’s lack of real commitment to a level playing field.
There’s more money in inequality.
Putting the peddle down
News that gambling companies sponsor so many NRL clubs’ jerseys prompted the question: what is it about vice and sports?
Why are gambling, alcohol and (until they were stopped) tobacco companies so drawn to the celebration of healthy activity? I guess the answer is men.
But also, when I went looking at NRL jersey sponsors, it became apparent that it’s not just vice peddlers crying for attention: it’s every kind of peddler.
The average rugby league team has as many as eight separate corporate sponsors on its jersey and shorts. Eight! Some are just a dog’s breakfast of multicoloured logos.
By comparison, the AFL allows three: one on the front, one on the back, one on the shorts. As reader Andrew Curnow points out: “If a Carlton, Collingwood or Richmond supporter from a hundred years ago was teleported to modern times, they’d instantly recognise their current strips. I’m not sure an NRL supporter would.”
As for asking players to play for pride in their jersey, how many are willing to die for the glory of, as Curnow puts it, “a sandwich board for Eat At Joe’s”?
Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.