As it was in the beginning, Newcastle had no right to get anywhere near the premiership trophy.
As it was in the beginning, the Roosters, with their bevy of proven title-winning, marquee recruits, had the star power to get them home.
But only just. And only in the detail do we see the devil of how they truly did it. This was a one-point, 19-18 victory that came rolling down a grand final mountain where 89 per cent of the game was played at one end, yet was in the balance until the final whistle blew.
Where the game swung for a long time toward the inevitable, thanks to the consequential play and consequential, single plays – however minute – that came before it.
Fortune favours the plucky and the Ponga
Newcastle deserved their first two tries for the small Everests of defensive grit and grout they piled up in front of them.
When heads cool and blood slows, though, Kalyn Ponga should have been sin-binned for hitting Victor Radley square in the temple a moment before one of the more inspirational plays of a season full of them from the Newcastle skipper.
In any other game, his forceful contact to Radley’s head was worthy of a 10-minute breather. Not for nothing though: a week after Newcastle’s 1997 premiership-winning captain Paul Harragon waxed lyrical about Ponga’s actions-over-words leadership style, the true depth of the intercept try that followed is also worth highlighting.
Ponga’s 50-metre tracking from marker to crumb a Mark Nawaqanitawase bat back wasn’t the first time he did so in this game, or his game at all. In Nine’s pre-game coverage, his Queensland Origin coach Billy Slater highlighted Ponga’s endless effort plays as the Newcastle No.1’s latest evolution in 2026.
Ponga is so regularly up in the defensive line these days, or scrambling at marker, Slater contended, that Sam Walker would be looking to exploit it with his short kicking game. In the 29th minute, Ponga covered roughly 150 metres to score one of the more memorable grand final tries of modern times.
Sing it again, Spencer: Chooks money man hits the high note
For all of Newcastle’s verve and nerve though, 90 seconds in the second half might have summed this contest up best.
The Roosters had attacked conservatively through the middle, lucked into a bit of Mark Nawaqanitawase magic for their first try to make for a 12-6 halftime margin, and picked right up hitting the same notes again in the second.
The Knights defended their tryline like demons in the 45th minute. Fletcher Sharpe cut down Nat Butcher on one side. Harrison Graham threw himself at ball-runners like he was a human cannonball. Sandon Smith did the same when his former teammate Salesi Foketi lined him up one-on-one and eyed the tryline just beyond.
Enter Spencer Leniu, the most maligned Rooster of them all, and even he knows, at this moment, he is a Rooster for probably only 35 more minutes. The firebrand prop is almost certainly playing his last game for the club after a trying stint that has courted as much controversy as quality.
But to this point in this grand final, he’s been fantastic off the bench. Leniu races off his defensive line and belts another once regularly questioned Roosters signing, Dominic Young, into error. Leniu roars in delight. Trent Robinson roars in delight. That’s what he was brought to the club for.
That’s the star power we’re talking about. Centre Billy Smith scores a minute later, with Sam Walker banging over the sideline conversion to draw the Roosters level.
Toops, there it is: You can’t keep a good flyer down
By now all that defence is taking its toll on the Novocastrians. They have performed immensely. But they’re starting to starve. A Walker penalty goal nudges the Roosters ahead for the first time.
James Tedesco forces a line drop-out. Ponga sends it Young’s way. Might as well. He is two metres tall, leaps tall buildings in single bounds etc. etc. But Daniel Tupou is not just one of the greatest wingers rugby league has seen.
He’s one of the great grand final performers. In 2013, 2018 and 2019, he shot the lights out in each decider, with a trio of his best big-game showings.
Tupou, 35 years old and 307 games into his career, leaps with ease and secures a two-handed take above his head to snaffle the ball and snuff out what could have been just as telling a play from Young.
Nawaqanitawase scores his second try a minute later on the other side of the field from a bonkers Daly Cherry-Evans grubber that bounces down from the crossbar. But the sequence starts with his reliable old winger partner.
The field goal DCE was born, and bought, to kick
Again, those red and blue legs are wearying all the while.
The territory statistics are straying toward 90 per cent of the game being played in Newcastle’s half. When the Knights do get a rare attacking chance, it’s not that they don’t know what to do with it. It’s that they’re flat out exhausted.
It’s the 64th minute, and the Roosters halves have handled the ball 38 times inside Newcastle’s 20-metre zone at this stage. The Knights scrum base pairing, in comparison, have their second when Fletcher Sharpe turns a forward underneath at the defensive line.
When he is caught trying to organise his ball-runners and thinking instead of catching the Steeden on the next play, it all catches up with them. There are more moments to come. Dane Gagai puts in a hopeful kick that runs dead for a seven-tackle set.
From the next set, the Roosters march downfield and Cherry-Evans calmly pots the winning one-pointer he was not just born to kick, but brought to the Roosters to kick too.
As it was not just in the beginning, but all bloody season long – when they lost their halfback, then their front-rower, then their other front-rower, then their hooker, then… – well Newcastle just never went away, did they?
They just kept on coming. Greg Marzhew had one last try for the road, one last effort to keep the fairytale going for four more minutes.
But as it was in the beginning of 2026, this one ebbed and inched toward the inevitable – with the Roosters and all their star-power mastering those tiny moments that matter most, and turning them into match-winners.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
