Source :- THE AGE NEWS
Almost three decades after lifting Newcastle to the most defining moment in the club’s history, Knights icon Paul Harragon has lauded Kalyn Ponga as a “one-in-20-year player” destined to lead the club to a drought-breaking premiership.
Harragon will forever remain Newcastle’s spiritual leader given his captaincy of the 1997 title-winning team at the height of the Super League war, and remains one of rugby league’s most respected voices.
His praise for Ponga’s own influence on Newcastle’s stunning rise this year – particularly his seismic 76th-minute shot on Moses Leota in Sunday’s 22-14 victory over the Panthers – carries serious weight.
Ponga, giving away 15 kilos to one of the best front-rowers in the NRL, rocked the Kiwi enforcer the same way Harragon rocked so many opponents throughout his 1990s heyday.
“To stand up under fatigue, late in the half, with only 12 players, and pull off a colossal hit on their alpha front-rower as captain, that tells your team, your club and town, that we’re not losing today,” Harragon tells this masthead.
“That was an incredible piece of leadership and it came from an incredible will to win. I’ve been blown away by what I’ve seen from Kalyn this year.
“He’s taking the club to another level and he’s a one-in-20-year player. A player of his quality will not go through his career without winning a grand final.
“Not when he’s playing the way he is now. His laid-back style of leadership has evolved and I’m amazed at the way he’s carrying himself and what he’s doing. On the back of his will alone, he’s lifted this club to this position. And he’ll lift them again.”
Harragon has no formal ties to the Knights these days beyond old boys’ events. But he is regularly around the club and was on hand when senior players were realigning Newcastle’s key values after a miserable 2025 campaign.
“And Kalyn was adamant about making sure ‘winning’ was the word, the ‘value’, that was put up in lights,” Harragon says.
“A lot of the past players were around and brought in for that one, and we’ve all noticed the switch in him. The tweak in his leadership, he’s added steel to that laid-back nature of his, and I think it just gives his teammates a real confidence and calm in him. That everything’s going to be OK.”
It’s a theme Harragon, born and bred in Kurri Kurri, can finally say loud and proud about his club as young forwards Cody Hopwood, Lachlan Crouch, Jermaine McEwen and Francis Manuleleua punch well above their weight ahead of Sunday’s grand final against the Roosters.
Hopwood and Crouch are local products, as are Fletcher Sharpe and Bradman Best out wide.
The Knights junior ranks produced strong results in several competitions this season, while the Hunter region had six Australian schoolboy representatives – a record for the area – just a year after Harragon, Andrew Johns and Danny Buderus met with Newcastle officials to ask what was going on with the club’s languishing pathways.
“That was such a sore point for me, we need to get that competitive advantage back,” Harragon says. “We lost our way. We won two titles [in 1997 and 2001] with a lot of local juniors and we just turned our back what made us great.
“I played for the Knights and I played Australian and slept in my own bed at home at my mum and dad’s, I didn’t have to go to Sydney, and we just stopped looking after our own.
“That will always be the key to Newcastle as a club.”
For proof, Harragon says, look no further than the fan turnout for last Sunday’s preliminary final and the grand final, and the week to come.
“And these young players, and Kalyn, the inner giants that are coming out them, and they’re playing beyond what anything thinks they’re probably capable of, that’s because they’re playing for something bigger than themselves,” Harragon says.
“You don’t do special things when you’re playing for yourself. You do that for a bigger cause. They’re tapping into playing for the club and playing for Newcastle.”
