2026 Knights Coaching and Football Staff

[Billy]

McKinnon, Ryan take on roles at the Knights, as club looks to shore up future talent

The former NRL players have taken on part-time roles.

www.newcastleherald.com.au

Article says Chris James has recruited Alex McKinnon and Andrew Ryan in junior identification and recruitment roles.
Both have been great at that in the past for us.

 

[mullenmagic]

McKinnon will be Pathways Recruitment Analyst "designed to drive innovation and infrastructure around talent identification." Ryan is a part-time Pathways Recruitment Scout, and sounds like he's basically just going to focused on the local league.

Not sure how good McKinnon was last time. The 2 things that come to mind are him apparently being the one who identified Dom Young (though he had already been on NRL clubs radars) and him gushing over his new signing Gehemat Shibasaki in one of those behind the scenes videos they used to make during preseason. Some of the takes he comes up with in his articles for Fox Sports don't really inspire much confidence but how much of that is him just doing his job (saying things that people will react to for engagement?) The job description kind of sounds like it's more of an admin/data analysis role than a hands-on scout or recruiter.