His run metre total of 337 metres is 2 more than Akuila Uate's 335 metres in 2012. The only players to have run more metres than To'o in a single NRL game are: Anthony Minichiello (344 metres), Jason Taumalolo (345 metres), Justin Hodges (346 metres), RTS (368 metres) and Clint Gutherson (369 metres).
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Ins: Blake Green (2021) Sauaso Sue (2022) Bailey Hodgson (2023) Jack Johns (Development deal - 2021) Tyson Frizell (Dragons - 2023) Dominic Young (Huddersfield - 2023
Outs: Sione Mata'utia (Released - St Helens) Tautau Moga (not re-signed for 2020) Mason Lino (not re-signed for 2020) Tyronne Roberts-Davis (not re-signed for 2020)
Overall a big net positive gain for the knights in signings for 2021. The loss of long-time knights junior Sione will be sorely missed however replacing him with Tyson Frizell certainly softens the blow. The other departed never managed to make an impact at the club. If Blake Green can make a successful recovery from a knee reconstruction, he will make a handy addition. In the few games he played for the knights last year he immediately gave the attack more direction and took the pressure off Pearce and Ponga to come up with plays.
I don’t expect Johns or Sue to make much of an impact but serve as decent depth coverage for the bench.
Hodgson and Young are two young English stars signed as development projects, both have made a splash already in the super league however I don’t expect either to get regular appearances this year.
Expectations With a good injury run top 4 With an average run 5-6 With a bad injury run 8-9
It’s an improved squad this year with another year under the new O’Brien regime. The ceiling for this squad (of so far perennial under-achievers) is top 4 for mine.
Key Players
Mitchell Pearce: Sompared to last season he needs to make his tackles. I think most people have too high of an expectation for Pearce, he’s not a million-dollar player the Knights just had to overpay at the time to get people to come to Newcastle. All I expect of Pearce is to take the ball when he gets it and play what he sees in front of him. The key is that we need a no.9 to decide when to give it to him not just blindly give him ball every time and a half to run plays in a good shape on the opposite side of the field.
Jayden Brailey: As I alluded to above Brailey staying on the field will be key to the knights success this year. He’s a massive step up in class above what we were able to field last year (thanks to the Buderus curse) and will provide direction and variation in our attacking structures.
Kalyn Ponga: Similar to Pearce I think people (low iq people mind you) have expectations way to high for Ponga, they act like he should
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