You couldn’t have asked for a starker contrast between Newcastle and North Queensland in the first game of the 2026 season: the Knights had changed, the Cowboys hadn’t. In the first great test of the Justin Holbrook era, in front of a crowd of loyal supporters who had made the pilgrimage from Broadmeadow to Las Vegas, the Knights finally snapped their nine-game losing streak and came away with their first victory since their 26-20 win over the Dolphins in Round 16 last year.

There were plenty of positives to take away from Newcastle’s performance this afternoon but one man stood at the middle of them: Kalyn Ponga. Upon inheriting the mantle from Adam O’Brien, Holbrook’s core job was to clarify Ponga’s role at the Knights – whether he needed to step up more in leadership, whether Newcastle were too structurally dependent upon his custodianship, and whether the team could be genuine premiership contenders with so much resting up his shoulders.

Of course, underlying it all was the broader question of Ponga’s susceptibility to injury – this was his first game since the Lisfranc fracture ended his 2025 season in Round 17 against the Raiders, and it was no coincidence that Newcastle’s losing streak began at this point too. First and foremost, it was great to see Kalyn back on the park, enjoying his footy again, and that ebullience stemmed in large part from the transformations that Holbrook and the club had made to the Newcastle spine over the off-season

Chief among them was the recruitment of Dylan Brown for a record-breaking NRL deal, and while Brown isn’t worth that much money on his own terms, it was clearer than ever before from this game that what the Knights were really paying for was Ponga – for a structure and support that would allow Ponga to achieve his footy genius in the years to come. Sandon Smith was also a good pickup from the Roosters for depth in the halves and he was needed this afternoon, when Fletcher Sharpe abruptly left the park at the 25^th minute.

Sharpe wasn’t a fresh recruit but he felt like a new presence on the field, making his mark more emphatically than any game in his breakout 2025 season. For the quarter-and-a-bit that he played, you could see a new era for the Knights emerging before your eyes, which made it doubly agonising when he left with a knee injury that would keep him off until the Round 4 clash with the Bulldogs. Sharpe was electric in virtually every touch, and scored the first try of the 2026 season off a daring fullback-esque play beneath a Ponga bomb.

Add to that some more power up the middle from Trey Mooney, who scored a try on debut, and the continuing reintegration of Dom Young (who also scored a try) since late 2025, and this was still a very promising game for Newcastle, who managed to rack up 28 points, twice their scoring average in 2025, and perhaps more importantly, were able to rally their defence to prevent North Queensland from building too much momentum off the two rapid tries they scored in the immediate wake of Sharpe’s departure.

On the other side of the Steeden, this game did nothing to halt North Queensland’s steady decline since 2022, the golden year of the Todd Payten era, when they finished third, won 17 games, nabbed a +270 differential, only conceded 45 points, and came within a game of the Grand Final. That defence-first mentality, spearheaded by Reuben Cotter and Tom Gilbert, saw a whole host of Cowboys – Dearden, Drinky, Nanai, Hammer, Taumalolo, Townsend – either start to realise their potential or rediscover their purpose and legacy.

In other words, it was pure footy synergy, a team that was more than the sum of its parts – a mythological period that every subsequent Payten year attempted to emulate. By the end of 2025 they’d conceded 684 points, the second-worst in the comp, and while Tom Dearden won back-to-back Paul Bowman Medals, and (like Scott Drinkwater) was arguably a better player than back in 2022, the team had lost much of its unity around him, putting him at a similar pressure point to Ponga to solve the club’s problems.

Unlike the Knights, then, who’d recruited flamboyantly with the Dylan Brown deal, the Cows needed spiritual transformation from within, and so had largely restricted their new players to strength up the middle, with Reed Mahoney the most significant buy in terms of providing game management around Dearden’s ball playing, and Matt Lodge a more controversial purchase, both for form and culture, following an injury-prone stint with the Sea Eagles. Jaxson Paulo also added a bit of welcome depth to the outside backs.

Even more than Mahoney, the biggest story from the North Queensland team roster was the return of Heilum Luki, a fan favourite and one-club mascot, who had missed the entire 2025 season after tearing his ACL in December 2024. Seeing him score the opening Cowboys  try was a critical rallying point for the North Queensland faithful as was the continuing rise of speedster Jaxon Purdue, who played for the full eighty and came away with 147 run metres, 65 post-contacts, 18 tackles (none missed) and 175 SuperCoach points.

Nevertheless, the Cowboys felt familiar, too familiar, especially in comparison to the excitement and novelty that suffused Newcastle, even after Sharpe was taken from the park. Periods of dominance emerged and disappeared, defence lapsed at critical moments, despite Payten invoking the defence-centric 2022 season regularly over the summer, and Dearden still felt like he was doing too much. Payten, it seemed, had reached the limits of what he could do with this club, despite a 12-12 scoreline heading into half time.

The first period of the game was marked by a bold Newcastle challenge, which led to two successive sets (including the first dropout) and a near-try from Dane Gagai to begin the season. After Jake Clifford had booted his first kick from his own forty, Jermaine McEwen appeared to make an error on play three. The Knights backed their man and the replay showed Clifford stripping the ball with Taumalolo also in the tackle, gifting Newcastle a full set in North Queensland’s end before the Cowboys even had a touch.

There were lots of promising signs to this set, much of it stemming from Ponga’s ingenuity. A short ball from Kalyn almost put Lucas through the line before a trio of Cowboys read the play perfectly, Ponga changed direction early in the count to give Brown a crack on the right edge, and then ended with a dummy and grubber that Burns was forced to pop into touch. North Queensland had only just survived the first set and now Newcastle had a dropout, all off the boldness of that opening challenge.

With Drinky going short on the kick and the footy sailing dead, the Knights had a close-range set, as Greg Marzhew and Jacob Saifiti contributed enormous charges on the first and third plays, and the Cows only just held up Young at the end of a mad dash to the right. Gagai leaped over from dummy half a second later, with a big show to the left, and no sooner had he crossed than Ashley Klein blew the whistle, contending that he’d knocked into Sam McIntyre’s last-ditch tackle before grounding the Steeden behind his head

Klein was ratified by the cameras and North Queensland had their first touch of the footy, only to send up an early challenge of their own that paved the way for Newcastle’s first try. No sooner had Taumalolo hit halfway and offloaded through three defenders than a Mahoney-Best double knock-on was called, and while the Cows sent it upstairs they got no joy, with the footage clearly showing that the ex-Bulldog had got the first touch. The Knights had a scrum from halfway and set out to make good on Gagai’s frustrated putdown.

Ponga began with a beautiful ball that nearly put McEwen through the line – shades here of his earlier pass to Lucas, who was doing a mountain of work up the middle, crossing halfway on play two and almost impossible to contain on the fifth. The last play was a manifesto for the new era of Newcastle, as Ponga bombed to the left, where Sharpe was like a second fullback, outleaping Drinky in the air, gathering the footy into his chest in both arms, and scoring through a Mahoney wraparound, mullet streaming behind him all the while.

With Trey Mooney coughing up on play one of the restart in the face of a tough shot from McIntyre, who’d already notched up two big defensive statements, the Knights lost some of their momentum – but this just allowed them to consolidate their defense, which led to their second try. For now, the Cows had a scrum from the ten with only 31% possession, and Newcastle held their line brilliantly, as four defenders halted Taumalolo right in front of the posts and Purdue was eventually contained on the left, losing the ball in the process.

Sharpe almost got an even more scintillating try when Burns lost the ball on play one of the next set – chasing it down, he toed it just a little too hard to ground before the dead line. Still there was no doubt that the Newcastle future had arrived this afternoon, especially when Ponga dodged a few defenders on play one of the subsequent set and won a penalty from Tom Chester in the process, gaining his men a full set in North Queensland’s end for the second time in about five minutes.

From there, the Knights had two cracks up the right, from Ponga and Young, and while the Cows cleaned up both efforts, Brown stepped into the spotlight for the first time with a well-weighted kick back to the left, where Chester came up with his second straight error, batting it straight back into the chest of Sharpe while competing with Best, who luckily didn’t make a grab at it. Sharpe had now combined beautifully with both Ponga and Brown, reading the play perfectly to loft a wide ball out to an eager Marzhew on the wing.

Pivoting back in field, Marzhew initially seemed wrapped up by Burns and Dearden right on the line only to put his head down and just keep on barging through, disposing of Drinky at the death to score Newcastle’s second try. The team that finished last in 2025 had now scored the first two tries of the season, after averaging 14 points per game last year, as this sequence crystallised into two memorable images: Marzhew lobbing the footy into the Allegiant crowd and Ponga adding the sideline kick to make it 12 unanswered.

Newcastle had hit their flow and followed up with both terrific and attacking displays, starting with Marzhew, the tryscorer, who contributed a monster run midway through the restart to get the Knights out of their red zone and then a rapid play-the-ball for Phoenix Crossland to boot through the first 40/20 of the season. The hosts had a full set inside the twenty and while they didn’t score here, they sure put in a heroic effort, with Brown charging at the left post to begin and then carving up the right on tackle five.

Only the full brunt of Taumalolo was able to contain Brown, and his heroism inspired Ponga to smash into a Coen-Hess combo on the last to ensure the Cows would have to work it right off their chalk. Nevertheless, North Queensland got a much-needed bump up the park when McEwen came in high on Purdue and consolidated with a magnificent trio of runs – Taumalolo hitting halfway on the second, Cotter reaching the forty on the third, and then Hess capping it off by dragging three defenders fifteen metres to hit the red.

Dearden drew inspiration from these charges by running it into the right corner on the last, where Ponga, Best and Sharpe combined to stop him, as staunch in defence as they had been in attack. For the second successive set the Knights struggled for position early in the count and for the second time too, a kick did the job, this time a soaring Dylan Brown ball just shy of halfway that Drinky had to take right on the try line. A moment later he succumbed to the tackle and left clutching his ribs with an apparent cartilage issue.

The issue had been a tackle on Young a few minutes earlier, and while this was a blow for the Cowboys, it would quickly be eclipsed by an even more shattering injury for Newcastle. In the meantime the Knights responded by re-energising their left edge, where Best delivered a sinuous tap-on to get space for Marzhew, bringing Dearden in for an ankle tap that couldn’t put the big ex-Titan into touch. It all ended with Young batting a Ponga ball back to land so nearly in Clifford’s chest that Jake knocked on in sheer surprise.

As Newcastle packed the scrum from the twenty another try felt inevitable, especially once Mooney hit the footy at speed on the third and took three defenders to hold him aloft half a metre over the try line. Six again rang out on the next play, so it was agonising when Sharpe misfired the pass and allowed Burns to scoop it up – the biggest letoff so far the Cows – although it didn’t take him long to start making up for it with a spectacular dummy half charge on the next set, in what was arguably the best run of the game so far.

Chester was first line of defence but Sharpe easily shrugged him off, before bumping past Mahoney, pivoting right, eluding Neame, and making a few more metres through a Cotter ankle tap. In the end, he notched up twenty overall, and while Chester hit back, weaving through a couple of defenders on play two of the next set, it was quickly absorbed into a superb Ponga take in the air, his whole body on the line, in what looked sure to be the next consolidation point for Newcastle – until the fateful moment of the game arrived.

The prelude was McEwen getting done for an escort, taking the edge off Ponga’s brilliant catch, but it was quickly absorbed into the spectre of Sharpe’s left leg giving way when coming in on Purdue at the end of the set. With no contact before he crumbled to ground, the Newcastle fans saw this twenty-five-minute burst of the Knights’ future dissolve into a potentially season-ending ACL injury – and in one of the worst decisions of the game, he was cleared to remain on the park. Unsurprisingly, the Cows capitalised immediately.

Their first try was every bit as rousing as Sharpe’s, with Luki celebrating his return after a full season on the sidelines by scoring North Queensland’s opening four points of 2026 out on the right. Dearden seized the moment too, shifting the assist across the chest of Sharpe, who was now limping in the defensive line. Best was simply unable to move in fast enough from the edge, while Luki was across the chalk too late for Lucas to make a difference surged in as last line of defence. With Clifford’s kick, we were back to a six point game.

Even more than Ponga, Sharpe had personified this new-look Knights, so it felt like the match had started afresh when Sandon Smith trotted on for his Newcastle debut, as word came down from the sheds that Drinky would return soon as well. There was a precarious sense of the match hanging in the balance, as Dearden glimpsed a small hole and would have broken through if not for a slip at halfway, Frizell almost hit Clifford before the kick, and Taulagi was a hair’s-breadth off high contact as Young took the high ball.

Sensing the impending rhythm shift, the Cows crammed the Knights inside their ten for the first two tackles of the next set, so Frizell did well to get them out of the red, and Brown made sure to boot it deep, while Ponga helped commence a tentative set-for-set dynamic by taking Clifford’s next bomb in the air. Yet that all changed when Purdue delivered his best charge so far, eluding Gagai under the high ball and then bumping off three more Knights to arrive at the brink of the thirty, where Jacob Saifiti finally got him to ground.

This run became the foundation of the Cows’ best long-range set of the first stanza, as well as their second try, as Burns built on Purdue’s vision with a strong run up the middle, comfortably over halfway by the time Crossland hit him, before Taulagi offloaded for Dearden to continue the attack into the twenty, and Mikaele ferried it into the ten. All North Queensland had to do was sweep left, and they nailed it, thanks to a flamboyant McIntyre offload that nabbed him his second try assist in 82 NRL games.

With Saifiti around his legs, the big second-rower flicked a left-hander back to Taulagi, who also reined it in with one hand and got to ground before Ponga could arrive to stop him. A brilliant sideline kick from Clifford leveled the score, and yet the Knights put in a masterclass of defence in the last eight minutes before the break to prevent North Queensland getting ahead. Play paused briefly at the beginning of the restart, when a Frizell cannonball saw Mikaele limp off the park, and Drinky finally return to lead his men once more.

From there, a deft Clifford shortside play got the Cowboys six again at the Newcastle ten, before Frizell made up for his error with a heroic trysaver on Hess, and Brown was forced to take Mahoney’s grubber dead in the left corner. North Queensland had matched the Knights’ twelve points and were now ending the first half much as it had begun, with a dropout, while Burns had also reversed his spotty form of the right quarter, taking a big run midway through, and ending a right sweep by pivoting back inside.

It took a horde of Newcastle defenders to hold him on the chalk, but hold him up they did, culminating an extraordinary period of goal line defence that ended with Hess losing the footy as he was attempting to offload. The last minutes before the siren saw the Knights begin elasticising again on their right edge, where McEwen and Gagai palmed off the defence, and Young came close to laying the foundation for a try, only for Taulagi to bat the footy free. Finally, moments from the break, Gagai found open space.

For a brief second it looked like Dane would make good on the disappointment of his opening try, but his impatience got the better of him, tempting him into an extravagant speculator when he would have done better to set up the try on the following play. Cotter scrambled for it, and the Knights headed to the sheds with the score drawn, but this was still an achievement after losing Sharpe, and that underdog resilience would turn the second stanza into a different kind of victory from the one they might initially have envisaged.

After all, they hadn’t scored since the first quarter when they returned from the sheds but they wasted no time repeating their opening pair of tries in the first ten minutes back. Brown set the tone with a soaring kick from halfway and Saulo responded by leaping a metre up and forward, the footy flying straight through his arms and coming off Drinky instead – or at least that’s how Klein saw it, since the Cows had no challenge left to query what seemed like a bit of a questionable call in slow motion.

In any case the Knights were attacking at close range once again, as Lucas came in diagonally off the left edge, requiring the foursome of Luki, Neame, Cotter and Drinky to halt him over the chalk – and even then won a penalty for an inadvertent Neame strip. In a supreme confidence play, Newcastle opted to leave the two and surge at the line again, and while they didn’t score on this set, their patience would pay dividends soon enough. Even here they came close, as Brown got things rolling with his seventh run on tackle two.

A few plays later they swept back to the left, where Marzhew offloaded on the wing and Smith slinked back inside but was unable to get the second phase away in turn, before Brown continue to organise with a well-weighted grubber that Drinky only just managed to retain as a horde of Knights tried to force the dropout. All the pieces were in place, and came together on the next set, when Best scored off a terrific late offload from Frizell and off our first real glimpse of Ponga in open space, a rousing sight for the Newy fans.

It all started with the Knights heading right at their forty, where McEwen bumped off Purdue, headed back in field, slipped to ground, and then rose to his feet to send it across for Frizell to draw in a few defenders, cross halfway and lob the latest of offloads back to Crossland. Phoenix read the setup perfectly, popping a quick cut-out to Smith, who showcased his best playmaking of the match, casting his eyes out to the wing but passing back in for Ponga to find open space and go toe to toe with Drinky, in a battle of the backs.

Just as Drinky was closing in Ponga bulleted it out to Best, and while the North Queensland custodian abruptly shifted his angle he still couldn’t get fingertips to Bradman, who curved around to repay Kalyn with his easiest conversion angle so far. With the Vegas turf five metres short than a regulation rugby league field, Clifford booted the kickoff out on the full, and the Knights scored back-to-back, again off some superb vision from Ponga, who with Smith tackled had to slot into first receiver and organise a rapid sweep to the right.

Ponga read the park perfectly, showing the Steeden twice to get his men in place and then linking beautifully with Brown, who sent it on for the Gagai catch-and-pass that put Young over the line. The Knights had scored for the first time on the right and repeated their opening haul, even if Ponga’s kick hit the post and ricocheted back out, so the Cowboys used the restart to commence the most impressive defensive period of their game, which would culminate with Taulagi scoring a try for their final points of the afternoon.

The shift was evident from play one of the restart, when Saulo copped an enormous hit from Taulagi himself, while even Frizell barely made it over the ten, and no sooner had Best glimpsed some position up the left than Chester and Burns converged on him to force the cough-up. North Queensland packed the scrum 35 metres out as John Farnham’s “You’re the Voice” blasted over Allegiant, and with six again at the ten the Cows had their chance, as Gagai delivered one of the close-range trysavers of the game on Kai O’Donnell.

Strangely, most of this close-range set was fairly uneventful, with the exception of Lodge almost getting his arm free on his second of two runs up the right, but Clifford brought his vision on the last, dummying left then dropping it on the boot to drill it deep into the left corner, where Taulagi leaped through air to beat Gagai to the putdown. With Clifford slotting it straight through the posts we were back to a four-point game, and North Queensland had taken four, rather than fourteen minutes, to hit back.

The longest arm wrestle of the match now ensued, and it would take several escalating waves of scintillating Newcastle defence before the Knights finally got the upper hand once again, in what had become the closest and arguably the most exciting NRL match in Vegas to date. As if pre-empting this imminent stalemate, Mahoney attempted to shake things up with a 40/20 attempt midway through the restart, but Ponga had no problem taking it on the full a metre out from the sideline.

This was good defence and yet for the second straight set the Knights only made it halfway through their count, due to a chaotic dummy half ball from Crossland that was too high for Lucas to jump for, forcing McEwen to knock it back with his right hand and then knock it on when Clifford dove on him at the moment of grounding. For the first time this afternoon we felt close to a boilover, as Mahoney took out some of the frustration of that thwarted 40/20 with some choice and cheeky words for whatever Knights were within earshot.

North Queensland had the scrum and another full set in Newy’s end, as Gagai stood up in defence, making a crucial tackle on Purdue in the left corner and then recovering the Steeden following a discombobulated NFL-esque pass from Clifford, in one of the oddest moments of the game. End-to-end footy ensued for a few minutes, in the most evenly paced period of the whole afternoon, giving the Americans a good taste of how rapidly rugby league can move without errors or penalties.

Finally, on the cusp of the last quarter, Burns had a prelude to the error that would come to define the back end of this game, with a cold drop off a Drinky pass, although this time around it was eclipsed by Best rushing a Marzhew ball and lobbing it over the sideline with wide space ahead of both backliners. Ponga, who set it all up with the initial pass to Best, was seething, and things got worse when McEwen leaked a lazy penalty, gifting the Cows a full set inside the thirty and a fresh opportunity to get ahead for the first time today.

Once more Newy cleaned up Purdue, who got past Gagai now but couldn’t deft Brown, before Marzhew was forced to deflect a wing pass from Chester, who would have done better to just dummy and run. With the Cowboys staring down a full set in the ten, and their biggest accumulation of position tonight, we were staring down the climax of the match’s biggest arm wrestle, so it was incredible when Dearden dummied on the right, on the cusp of a signature show-and-go, only for Lucas to clock it perfectly and shut down the play.

The blue and red wall had stayed strong, and this display of defence restored the epochal feeling of Sharpe’s appearance – the sense that Newcastle were on the verge of a new era – although in a very different kind of way. Two adrenalin-fueled moments ushered in the next period of the game, which crystallised around the Knights’ second defensive masterclass of the back forty, starting with Mahoney coming in marginally on Ponga before the kick, and barking out some banter as Kalyn remonstrated with him from the ground.

The second was Taumalolo barreling into Crossland at the other end of the park, ensuring that the Knights only made it to their thirty on the next set, while the Cows followed with a good long-ranger, as Drinky drew in two on play to one to offload a few more metres to Purdue, and Taumalolo contributed two splendid charges. As a result, North Queensland  were inside their ten by the time that Young was forced to knock down a Clifford pass to the wing. Once again, Newcastle were holding the line right on their chalk.

Once again, too, they survived, as Lucas saved a Hess try on pay one, Frizell did the same on play three, a Newcastle pack almost dragged Luki over the sideline in between, and the chain of communication broke down on the fourth, when Taulagi found himself with the footy on the sideline and got pinged for hitting touch, even though the replay showed how artfully he’d danced between Gagai and the chalk. In any case, Drinky, who received the fling back, was dumped unceremoniously into touch by an amped-up Young.

With such a staunch blue and red wall to buoy them up, the Knights only needed an opening to score – and they got it two sets later, when Burns slammed a shoulder into Ponga’s face and was promptly sent to the bin for the remainder of the match. Newcastle scored immediately, off one of their classiest combinations – a Smith kick to the right that was perfectly placed, if just a little short, but that Young easily compensated for with his aerial prowess, taking it with his knee at the same level as Purdue’s face.

That was just the first part of Young’s contribution too – upon hitting the ground, he turned in Purdue’s legs tackle until he was facing his own try line and then flicked it back to Mooney, who got fingertips to it once, fumbled it a second time, and finally regathered it, reaching out his full wingspan to slam it down in his right arm with Hess around his waist. Mooney had scored on his Newcastle debut, and so the fairytale finish was only six minutes away as Ponga slotted through the extras to make it a 28-18 scoreline.

The Cowboys had their fair share of chances in those final minutes too, receiving six again at the very end of their next set, and camping out on the Newcastle line until Mahoney weighted his kick too hard. Two and a half minutes from the siren, a Taulagi intercept led to yet another North Queensland set in the Knights’ end, and then six again right on the line, and yet this culminated in Newy’s last great burst of defence, as Drinky sent a cut-out to Chester, who flicked it back in field as Marzhew barged him into touch.

The defence was so compressed on the edge than no sooner had McIntyre taken Marzhew’s ball than he had to pop his own offload in field – a behind-the-back no-looker that Crossland intercepted, in a beautiful rejoinder to Taulagi’s earlier play. The game paused 14 seconds before the end, as Hess got bandaged, blood streaming from his forehead, and then the Knights had won their first match since June 21, 2025, in Perth. To achieve all that with Sharpe off at the 25^th minute was a daring display for the new Holbrook regime.

On the other side of the Steeden, the Cows would falter from this point onwards, starting with their 44-16 loss to the Tigers at Leichhardt the following weekend – always an emotionally charged match, given the massive scorelines at this venue in recent years – while Payten’s contract would be renewed in June for another two years. Sharpe would be diagnosed with a PCL rather than ACL injury and would be back by Round 4, when he led the Knights to a gutsy win over the Bulldogs, a high point in their early season consolidation.