Geez, what I wouldn't give to be at this game! It's gonna go off ... hopefully my 14" tv can convey the atmosphere! 
Blockbuster set to be sellout
By Dean Ritchie
April 11, 2006
NEWCASTLE'S blockbuster against North Queensland at EnergyAustralia Stadium this Sunday is the most anticipated club match in history after a staggering 20,000 tickets were sold yesterday - still six days before the game.
Never before has as many tickets been sold for a club game so far out from kick-off.
"We're on a roll, they're on a roll," summed up champion Knights halfback Andrew Johns as the Newcastle faithful queued outside the club's stadium all day yesterday.
The Easter Sunday game will be sold out today or early tomorrow.
Knights fans are hoping to see the mercurial Johns lead their team back to the top of the table.
The match-up between Johns and North Queensland five-eighth Johnathan Thurston will be the best individual clash of the season.
And the game will also be special for Johns, who will break Tony Butterfield's record of 229 first-grade matches for Newcastle.
"It's looming as one of the great matches of the season so far," Johns said. "The anticipation here in Newcastle is enormous."
Season ticketholders have snapped up tickets while all corporate boxes are sold out. Just 6000 tickets remain unsold.
Johns' manager John Fordham said "Joey" was excited at the prospect of becoming Newcastle's most capped player.
"On a personal note, Joey is looking forward to playing against a team with so many exciting players like Thurston and Matt Bowen," Fordham said. "But Newcastle also have their share of exciting players like Milton Thaiday and Brian Carney."
The last club match to have such a build-up was Bulldogs v Parramatta at Sydney Showground in 2001.
Cowboys coach Graham Murray said his players were looking forward to playing in front of a hostile 26,000 crowd.
"The expectation is this will be a great game," Murray said.
"North Queensland have come a long way since opposition teams wanted to take us to Gosford to play [their home] games.
"The atmosphere will be outstanding."
North Queensland remains unbeaten this season and is premiership favourite, while Newcastle have been highly impressive whenever Johns has been on the field.
The Knights belted St George Illawarra 54-6 last Saturday night in Wollongong with Johns calling the shots. However, they were beaten at home by the Warriors when he sat out the game.
NRL chief executive David Gallop said league fans were counting down to Sunday's game.
"It's unbelievable the anticipation around this match," Gallop said.
"Thurston versus Johns ... it doesn't get any better than that for rugby league fans. And Thaiday up against Matt Bowen will also be spectacular.
"It is amazing to think Newcastle collected the wooden spoon last year."
From: http://foxsports.news.com.au/story/0,8659,18773559-23214,00.html
All fear the little men in Joey's shadow
By Roy Masters
April 11, 2006
WHEN Joey Johns is lying in state in 2070 or so, footballers will poke him with a stick to see if he is still alive. The Knights playmaker is so admired, he seems destined for a glass mausoleum in Hunter Street, Newcastle, and so feared that visiting teams are likely to check the coffin's gold-laced latches, lest he jumps up and destroys them on the morrow.
St George Illawarra coach Nathan Brown certainly believes the legend of Johns will pass the new century, saying after the Dragons' humiliation on Saturday: "You're not going to see another player like him in a hundred years."
Statements like that are either an indictment on Brown's own profession, or an advertisement for cloning. Joey's DNA may become the most precious commodity in sport after Shane Warne's wrist.
Johns and his opponent this Sunday, the Cowboys' Johnathan Thurston, have reversed the terror that begins to flow in the days and hours before a big game. For almost all of the history of both rugby codes, the current of fear originated in the vicious tacklers and flowed white hot into the rattled pysches of the players who earned their big contracts for what they did with ball in hand.
But Johns, Thurston and a fit Benji Marshall have sent the terror flow back the other way. The big props who once stalked around dressing rooms, barking commands at their timid halves and wingers, head-butting lockers, taping knuckles, grunting at officials, causing everyone else to have nervous pees, are the ones praying out loud. The little attacking players are now in command.
Cleaning up the game - ridding it of vicious elbows, coathangers, stomping, rising knees - is a big factor but the predators are now the prey; terrified stand the terrorists.
Former Balmain prop Steve "Blocker" Roach agrees brilliant players like Johns now strike fear into the defence, saying: "He's the one who intimidates now." ARL chief executive Geoff Carr, a former St George winger, says: "I can still remember all the talk in the dressing room before the first, first-grade game I played. It was a Wills Cup pre-season match and all they talked about was Kevin Ryan, who had shifted to Canterbury. All the talk was Ryan and what he would do. I didn't know what to think."
Since Ryan, there has been Mal Reilly, Les Boyd, Les Davidson, David Gillespie and company, men capable of doing something deft with the ball but mainly feared for hitting with the subtlety of a broken beer bottle over the head.
Maybe the current of fear began trickling back the other way with the rise of Wally Lewis and his long passes and clever kicks, but the King only played three big games a year.
The rugger men will argue their attacking players have always been dominant. Former Wallaby Peter Crittle once told me: "We only had one move in international rugby. Give it to [Ken] Catchpole."
But Colin "Pine Tree" Meads, the All Blacks forward, soon stopped that, grabbing the brilliant Randwick player's leg and peeling back its muscles, like a stocking rolled down. What sets Johns apart and, to a lesser extent, Thurston is that they raise the skill level of their teams.
Johns plays with such a rare mix of guile and glee you wonder if he's not still a 10-year-old sitting on the lounge room floor at the controls of a video game.
But that underscores his effect on his teammates. He's the ultimate difference maker, not in the sense he can do everything, but because he makes all his teammates better.
As Blocker says: "All the Newcastle players can pass and catch on the run at speed and it's all coming from Joey Johns. He's even inventing new plays."
The way the Knights and Cowboys are playing, all the other teams can do is adjust the speed of their death, not the inevitability. So what happens when they play each other, as they do in Newcastle on Sunday?
How do Newcastle approach Thurston and North Queensland counter Johns? By not giving them the ball. If one team gets 60 per cent of the ball, the other team can forget about winning.
Both teams will be afraid of turnovers, playing more conservatively than in the past month. But, as bookies have been saying recently, don't bet on it.
From: http://www.smh.com.au/news/league/a...in-joeys-shadow/2006/04/10/1144521267443.html
