2026 Knights Coaching and Football Staff

Lefty

Danny 'Bedsy' Buderus
I thought we needed a separate thread for our coaching and football staff for next year.

The SMH has reported we have offered Luke Keary a position with us as an attack and halves consultant from next season and he is considering this.

 
I thought we needed a separate thread for our coaching and football staff for next year.

The SMH has reported we have offered Luke Keary a position with us as an attack and halves consultant from next season and he is considering this.

I mean I don’t mind this, he was a elite five-eighth, him working next to Holbrook as attacking figures I wouldn’t mind it, he could also teach Sharpe and Hunter something
 
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With POS cleaning out the underperforming players from our roster, Parr and Chris James managing the football department and a fresh and capable head coach setting in, together they can start to turn this club around.

We now need to appoint capable attacking and defence coaches, a fitness coach (or whatever they are called) and ensure all the pathways coaches are competent.
 
So we may be looking at, so far:

Head coach: Justin Holbrook
Assistant coach (attack): Steven Hales
Assistant coach (defence): Brett White
Specialist coach (kicking & catching): Nick Davis
Consultant coach (halves/attack): Luke Keary
Head of recruitment: Peter O'Sullivan
Head of high performance: Unknown

I rate it. Man there is sincerely some chance of the Storm winning the comp purely on the back of Xavier Coates kick contest tries so the ex-AFL guy as a full time staff member is starting to feel essential if we're going to catch up.
 
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Holbrook dropped the usual platitudes about "a tough, hard-working team for a blue collar area", but that mooted coaching structure absolutely reads like Holbrook thinks priority #1 is getting this team scoring some god damned points.

I know there are concerns about Holbrook being an attack coach who needs to hand over all the defence to someone else but his track record as a head coach doesn't indicate that's the case. The Titans were the worst defence in the comp - by a mile - when he got that gig, and their improvement the next season was principally because the defence got a lot better straight away when he got there. He didn't "fix" them, but he identified the #1 reason why they were god awful and sorted that ASAP. I suspect the approach at Newy will be similar.

But most head coaches don't spend time on the granular detail stuff of a team's attack - that's why he's brought in like-minded assistants and is trying to get Keary in. The **** attack for us I think has been more about the overall vision for how AOB wanted us to play rather than Blake Green not being able to teach anyone how to do block shapes etc. I also always suspected AOB is a bit of a micro-manager and poor delegator. That I think is why he went through a lot of assistants.

The buck stops with Justin on effort, on commitment, on the intensity they play with, and on the overall philosophy. The detail stuff of what players do in attack when & why - if he's a good head coach, he will put a lot of trust in Hales, (hopefully) Keary, and the players themselves, on that front.

You would be naive as a Knights fan to say "everything is gonna be great and the team will rule" next year, but I'm definitely anticipating an intent to get the team playing a much more positive, enterprising & entertaining style of footy.
 
I hope they keep Dobson.
He has been coaching all our younger guys like ESL, Manuleleua, Hunt, McCarthy, De Courcey, Hopwood, Votano etc.
All these news coaches will know all they need to know about guys who have been playing NRL for years, but it will be handy to have a coach who knows the strengths and weaknesses of the young guys.
 
So the Knights and Titans swapped defence coaches

Anyone else concerned 😅
Sincere answer: no.

He was headhunted from the Raiders. He was the defensive coach of their 2018-22 teams. Defensive rankings of those teams -

2018: 12th
2019: 3rd
2020: 4th
2021: 9th
2022: 6th

Then at the time Holbrook got sacked at the Titans, they were about 12th I believe. It's all gone to **** since then, absolutely, but there is always a lot of noise with these things and the team generally playing **** in other ways bleeds into your D as we saw with us this year. The Titans are the Bermuda Triangle for coaching careers.

McDermott with us -

2023 - 4th
2024 - 6th
2025 - 15th.

Not really anything in there that leads me to believe one is this great defensive savant who'll fix the Titans and the other is this constitutionally incapable fool who's to blame for the Titans sucking like they do. Pretty comparable track records for being heavily involved in very good defensive teams, but also teams where the wheels totally fell off.

I know the temptation is always there to say - their attack is ****, therefore the attack coach is bad; their defence is ****, therefore the defence coach is bad - but in all honesty there are so many moving parts with this stuff. David Furner had never been the attack coach for a team any worse than like the 3rd or 4th best attack in the comp but not when he was under AOB for example.
 
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Looks like the coaching staff overall is in for a big upgrade.

Defence is all about attitude, and systems. But Attitude is massive. If they can get the squad with the right attitude to keep turning up we should be fine.

AFL catching coach is great.

Keary helping train up the halves give me half a mongrel.
 
Herald reporting Keary is only an outside chance of taking up the role with the Knights. Says he plans on staying in Europe and travelling with his family.
 

Says we are unlikely to get Keary because he wants to stay in europe ans travel

Also says AFL player Davis "had" been tipped to be kicking coach - but maybe that is just worded badly.

Also says White is a chance.

Says we are currently looking at the coaching structure and might go with a different coaching set up.
 
How long does Keary want to travel around Europe for?

He could travel with his family from now till the end of the year (3 months) and be back beginning of January.

It’s usually fitness till the end of the year, so he wouldn’t be missing any crucial tactics and game planning, so I don’t think it would affect us at all if he arrived in January
 
I’d imagine him coming in for sessions in between games would be the most important part of his job, too. Going over video with the spine. Etc.

Not bothered about him showing up “late”. Investing in Holbrook means investing in his staff. If this is who he wants working with Sandon, Dylan and the kids in lower grades, just make it happen. There would be few former players who are more ideal for this sort of role than him and almost no one who’d command the respect he does. It’s a pretty consistent thing with these modern players that they respond to recent retirees more than the greats of the 90’s and 00’s.
 
How long does Keary want to travel around Europe for?

He could travel with his family from now till the end of the year (3 months) and be back beginning of January.

It’s usually fitness till the end of the year, so he wouldn’t be missing any crucial tactics and game planning, so I don’t think it would affect us at all if he arrived in January
Depends on his kids ages. If I had the same money in the bank as him, I’d travel until I needed to settle down for the kids schooling.
 
Depends on his kids ages. If I had the same money in the bank as him, I’d travel until I needed to settle down for the kids schooling.

Yeah i can understand the need to travel now.

Once kids get in school, school owns them until the graduate.
 
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