It's finally happening...

After a couple of false starts built on desperate hype, the Newcastle Knights are a finals side. While we've seen them go on winning runs to tease the idea before, the quality of football they've produced over the first six rounds of the interrupted season is better than we've seen in years.

Back-to-back wins over the Warriors and Tigers allowed the Knights to wait comfortably while the season was suspended. The 14-14 draw on their return only heightened the expectations of the club whose only loss this season has come against the Storm (26-12, Round 5).

The Knights have shown enough across the last month to suggest they will finally take the next step in becoming a long-term successful football side.

It's been a long road. One that saw two hurdles hold back their progress in 2019 but have since been leapt in 2020 to give life to the idea that this is all real. 

First, coach Nathan Brown.

While he had his supporters when shown the door towards the end of last season, most have since accepted he was not the man to take the club into the future. The list of reasons to move him on is longer than some might care to admit, but most recently, the results were poor, his trialling of Kalyn Ponga at five-eighth was a disaster that went on for too long, and his handling of Jessee Ramien both on and off the field said a lot about his man-management. But, nothing has proved the point more than the response of the players since his departure.

Brown skated by on low expectations to start. When expectations grew, a timely piece of Ponga magic or a Mitchell Pearce purple patch papered over the cracks. 

New coach Adam O'Brien, on the other hand, is producing noticeable and sustainable results. The Knights defence has only conceded more than 20 points once so far in 2020 (24 points vs Tigers, Round 2) while they showed more mental toughness in O'Brien's third game in charge than Brown could get out of them in four years.

After losing Connor Watson and Mitchell Pearce inside nine minutes and finding themselves 14-0 behind after 25 minutes with only two players on the bench and two-fewer interchanges available than planned, the Knights dug deep and rallied back to level the game up at 14-14. An Edrick Lee dropped ball is all that stopped the Knights from earning an incredible victory.

Pearce attributed their newfound mental toughness directly to his new coach:

"He's worked hard on our mindset and toughening our mindset up in all areas of our footy. He's a super coach and all of the boys are right behind him and want to play for him each week."

That toughness has translated to improvements with the ball in hand, too.

Outside of Brown, Newcastle's most significant issue has been their lack of go-forward through the middle. Pairing elite attacking players like Ponga and Pearce together is great, but they can only do so much behind what was a beaten pack almost every week.

That has all changed in 2020 and their Round 6 win over the Broncos highlights just how far the pack has come under O'Brien. 

While it's only a single-game comparison, the Round 6 win in 2020 tells a large portion of the story when measured up against a Round 15 win against the same opposition in 2019.

The Knights sent out exactly the same starting forward pack in both games; Daniel Saifiti and David Klemmer at prop, Sione Mata'utia and Lachlan Fitzgibbon in the backrow, and Tim Glasbyat lock. The results are anything but the same, though.

Newcastle ran for 1,371 metres in the 2019 matchup.

Klemmer led the way as he always did, Saifiti managed a very rare 100+ metres while Fitzgibbon cleared his season-average by over 30 metres. This was a good performance for the Knights in 2019.

Fast-forward to 2020, and we can really see the improvements to the Knights pack and the flow-on effect of an even spread. They ran for 2,159 metres in this one.

Saifiti's development, in particular, has taken the Knights pack to another level. After averaging just 94.2 metres in 2019, the 24-year-old prop has come of age to average a whopping 171.6 metres through six games in 2020. Following a year in which cracking triple figures was a rarity, Saifiti hasn't fallen short of the mark once in 2020. He even managed 106 post-contact metres in a single game (Round 3 vs Panthers).

Saifiti has become a lot more destructive in his carries - another benefit of O'Brien's influence. Breaking just 13 tackles in 21 matches last season, Saifiti has broken 16 tackles already this season.

With Saifiti taking his game to another level, Klemmer has been able to adjust his production.

Klemmer joined the Knights for the 2019 season and was painted as their missing piece on arrival. For a side lacking through the middle, the 181 metres he averaged per game is just what the Knights needed. Still, they finished 16thin yardage.

While Klemmer is averaging the same 170 metres he produced last season, his ball-playing and offloads have been a major contributor to Newcastle's overall improvement.

No longer needing to carry the team up the field each and every set, Klemmer's focus has turned. He's pivoted towards getting his arms free to release an offload and extend the play. The second-phase has helped the Knights generate the third-most metres per game in the NRL. Not surprisingly, the Knights lead the competition in supports with 134.2 per game - considerably higher than the Sea Eagles at second (117.3).

We've already seen the Knights score 24.8 points per game as a result of the changes, but their overall attack still has room to improve. 

Kurt Mann has started every game at five-eighth this season. While far from a finished product in the position, the 27-year-old is playing some of the best football of his career. It has come on the back of O'Brien assuring Mann he would receive an extended run at the position to start the season. It's the first time Mann has started in the same position for six games or more since playing 11 games on the wing for the Dragons in 2016.

With the vote of confidence and opportunity to get comfortable, Mann is averaging 106.7 running metres per game and has handed out five try assists. He's only going to get better as the Knights spine becomes more cohesive, too. Often getting onto the end of sweeping shifts as a trailing fullback more than a ball-playing five-eighth at the line, Mann adds an interesting wrinkle to the Knights attack.

In improving the mindset of the Knights defensively, making minor adjustments to major players in the middle, and putting confidence in somebody to fill a position that has seen seven different faces in two seasons and not one for more than seven consecutive games since Watson in 2018, O'Brien has turned a middling team on the verge of stalling into a top-four contender.

Crystal Ball

Starting the season 2-0, the Knights resumed Round 3 with the Stats Insider NRL futures model at 4.2% for the premiership, 22.9% for the top four and 57.1% to make the Top 8.

Now 4-1-1 and 2nd on the NRL ladder with an easier remaining schedule than most, the model has given the Knights a massive bump across the board. 

They're morals for the Top 8 at 79.8% while the likelihood that they retain their place in the top four is an encouraging 35.4%. Had the Roosters not returned from the break to blitz the rest of the competition to be 26.2% favourites for the premiership themselves, the Knights would be a lot higher than their current 5.3%.

Ignore the "rebuild" discussions that have circulated Newcastle since 2014. This is what a rebuild looks like; developing cohesion, steady improvements, and astute signings in positions of need (enter: Tyron Frizell in 2021).

A top six finish and encouraging performance through the finals can be considered a great success for a club that promised so much for two years, but only delivered back-to-back 11th-placed finishes.

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