Newcastle Knights odds

The Newcastle Knights have fallen on hard times since their stunning exploits in the early years of the NRL.

Finals were on the cards for much of the 2019 campaign, but the Knights lost the plot late in the year and wound up down in 11th place.

Can Newcastle crack into the top eight in 2020? Let’s see where they sit with the bookies in the latest NRL outright betting markets.

About the Newcastle Knights

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Updated Newcastle Knights futures odds

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Best Newcastle Knights bets for NRL 2019

There are dozens of NRL futures markets for Newcastle, but where are they likely to return some real value?

Click on the tabs below to get more analysis on these markets:

• Knights 2019 premiership betting
  The Knights showed plenty of improvement last year, but not enough to crack finals. Although they should be in or around the top eight in 2019, it is far too soon to start talking about premierships.
  
• Top 8 betting
  If Nathan Brown is to keep his job, Newcastle have to be better again this year. That means finals footy, which the Knights have not tasted since 2013. Bottom half of the eight is a very realistic goal.
  
• Dally M Medal betting
  After a breakout debut season at McDonald Jones Stadium, Kalyn Ponga starts the 2019 NRL season as the runaway favourite in Dally M Medal betting. Who are we to argue?
  

2019 Newcastle Knights draw

Knights players to watch in 2019

Kalyn Ponga
Born: 30/3/1998
Games: 29
Tries: 9
Position: Fullback, five-eighth

Ponga was outstanding at fullback in his first season with the Knights, but it looks like he will spend a lot more time in the halves in 2019. No matter where he lines up, the WA-born youngster is Newcastle’s most dangerous player and a deserving favourite for the Dally M.

Mitchell Pearce
Born: 7/4/1989
Games: 254
Tries: 64
Position: Halfback

A pectoral injury limited Pearce to only 15 games in his first season at Newcastle, so he will want to make a serious impact in 2019. If he and Ponga settle in well together, the Knights might have one of the best halves pairings in the league.

Tautau Moga
Born: 6/12/1993
Games: 63
Tries: 22
Position: Centre

Moga had played only four games for his new club when he ruptured his ACL for the fourth time. The Samoa rep might not be ready for round one, but he will provide a big injection of class to Newcastle’s back half whenever he does return.

Newcastle Knights records and stats

• Player records
  Most games: 257 – Danny Buderus
  Most career points: 2176 – Andrew Johns
  Most career tries: 110 – Akuila Uate
  Most points in a season: 279 – Andrew Johns (2001)
  Most tries in a season: 21 – Timana Tahu (2002) and Akuila Uate (2010)
  
• Team records
  Most consecutive wins: 11 (2001-02)
  Most consecutive losses: 19 (2016-17)
  Highest score: 70-32 (vs. Raiders, 2006)
  Biggest winning margin: 60-0 (vs. Rabbitohs, 1999)
  Biggest losing margin: 6-71 (vs. Broncos, 2007)
  Largest NRL attendance: 32,642 (vs. Sea Eagles, 1995)
  
• Knights NRL history
  Newcastle’s rugby league story is much, much older than the Knights. The city was home to one of the nine clubs that founded the NSW Rugby Football League way back in 1908. However, the Newcastle Rebels left the competition after only two seasons when most of their homegrown talent jumped ship to play in a new local league.

  Although Sydneysiders regarded it as a second-rate competition, the Newcastle Rugby League soon became one of Australia’s strongest regional sporting divisions. It fielded a number of successful representative teams throughout the 20th century, several of which were good enough to beat touring sides from interstate and overseas. League legends Clive Churchill, John Sattler, Les Johns and Johnny Graves all played in Newcastle, while NSW and Kangaroos hero Wally Prigg spent his entire club career there.

  As the NSWRL began to expand in the 1960s, talk arose of a new team based in the Hunter Region. However, clubs and league administrators in Newcastle worried that such a move would diminish the value and status of their own competition. They declined an invitation to enter a side in the NSWRL in 1982, which led to the foundation of the Canberra Raiders instead.

  It was a different story a few years later when nationwide expansion became inevitable. In 1988, the Newcastle Knights joined the Sydney first-grade competition along with the Brisbane Broncos and the Gold Coast-Tweed Giants. The team was an instant hit with rugby league fans in country NSW and took only three seasons to reach the playoffs.

  The Knights’ popularity was highlighted during and after the Super League wars of the mid-1990s, when the rival Hunter Mariners franchise came and went within a matter of years. It helped that Newcastle won the Australian Rugby League title in 1997 with the assistance of a handy little footballer by the name of Andrew Johns, who would go on to win three Dally M Player of the Year awards.

  The red and blue have endured a few ups and downs since those heady days. A drugs scandal tarnished their success of the late ’90s, while the city as a whole fell on hard times after the closure of the BHP Steelworks. Even the 2011 signing of Queensland super-coach Wayne Bennett could not inspire the Knights to glory. Three wooden spoons later, the only way is up for Newcastle.
  

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