2026 Knights Coaching and Football Staff

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.
 
www.newcastleherald.com.au

'What the Knights become next': Parr hails a new era as season launched for 2026

'We believe you can deliver a season that all of us can stand behind.'
www.newcastleherald.com.au www.newcastleherald.com.au

Article where Hales is described as our attacking coach and says he worked with Dylan Brown from when he was 17 and newly arrived from NZ. We know who to blame if the attack doesn't fire.

Also says White is our defence coach and worked with Trey Mooney from an early age at Canberra.
 
Random question but does anyone know if the public can watch training / field sessions at the centre for excellence, or if it’s off limits
 
SKD has been offered some unspecified role in the football department.

I notice Buderus isn't being mentioned as an assistant coach anymore, although he is still in some of the training photos.

I always thought Bedsy was only helping out till the new coaches got up to speed, so I won't be surprised if SKD steps into Bedsy's job.
SKD retired as a player 2 years ago and stepped right into assistant coach of Hull KR. I was just reading the comments about him leaving Hull KR and they credit him with helping create the professional culture that won them their first title in decades.
Be nice if he could repeat that for us.
 
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It’s official - SKD is back.


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Rewatching the Raiders game, Brett White deserves some flowers. Plenty of people on here are noticing the issues some of our players have individually as defenders, but I think there's been some smart tweaks to the defensive system to account for this. Sort of of a theme with the improvement in the attack, there's a lot of clarity around situational adjustments depending on whether or not we're controlling the ruck effectively in D. The consistency of applying inside pressure under fatigue is also very pleasing - it was definitely notable that it fell away for the Raiders when they were gassed and that led to them giving up those breaks out wide. But it never fell away for us.

There were some very hairy moments in the first few rounds as the players adjusted but I think they're really clear about the system now. I think this can be a sub-20 points conceded per game team this season, which these days is very good.

It also helps that we're not carrying a prop who has turned it up over frustration with his contract situation but I digress.
 
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HarVeeGee13 said:
Sort of of a theme with the improvement in the attack, there's a lot of clarity around situational adjustments depending on whether or not we're controlling the ruck effectively in D.
Click to expand...
It feels like there is definitely far less of being caught out running behind the wrong decoy runners or lines, or decoy runners not knowing their roles, and where to run, compared to last year
 
I think Holbrook was talking about our new defensive structure when the ref in the Warriors game smashed us.
He said things like we were being over officiated and it was OK for the first 2 rounds.
I don't know if we've changed anything since then, or if it was just that one ref who hated the guys swarming up in defence (or whatever they are doing)
 
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