There is pride and honour in Newcastle’s agonising NRL grand final defeat

In the end, the final mountain proved too high for Newcastle to climb even if they got a good, long look at the summit. 

The Knights gave that mountain everything they had and then a little bit more. Until the very end of their 19-18 loss to the Roosters, they never stopped fighting for their miracle. 

It was perhaps the cruellest fate of all, to come so far, to do so much, to play so proud and strong, only to fall short by the narrowest margin possible, to come so close to defying the odds one last time. 

It is easy, when you’re not of a Novocastrian persuasion, to say they lost no admirers, or that they did themselves proud. 

Such words are of cold comfort in the quiet void of defeat, and truth doesn’t always cut through the pain. 

But it is still important to say it, because there is still honour to be had, and they earned that with their effort and their toughness and their ability to save at least half a dozen tries. 

When Kalyn Ponga went the length of the field midway through the first half, completing a play where he started out making a try-saving tackle on Billy Smith in one corner and finished scoring in the other, running about as far as a person can on a rugby league field, it felt like the moment that would last forever from this match. 

The gut-busting effort to cover so much ground in the first place, the long journey towards the very heart of the Newcastle fans who had turned Stadium Australia into a little piece of the Hunter and the fact that the Knights had, yet again, scored from a thousand miles out gave a feeling that maybe this really was destiny. 

Those tries from the ends of the Earth have been Newcastle’s hammer of the gods through this finals run, but in the second half the Roosters gave them no Earth to run from because the Tricolours were as inevitable as the tide through the middle of the field. 

They tried to starve the Knights to death and just about did it. 

Newcastle had six tackles inside the opposition all night compared to 51 for the Roosters as the newly minted premiers went direct and they did it hard and often. 

It was a game plan made for Clive Churchill Medal winner James Tedesco as he put up a run metres total that may as well have been the distance back to Newcastle itself. 

But he was not alone. Naufahu Whyte showed why he is a man of iron and Spencer Leniu ran like he didn’t care what happened to him next. 

They bent the Knights up like pretzels, so much so that the underdogs could have started charging rent inside their own 20. But Newcastle would not break. 

The tries they did concede came from one of those Mark Nawaqanitawase efforts that only he could do, a Billy Smith barge-over that came after three try-saving efforts in as many plays beforehand and a wicked bounce off the posts that fell just right for Tedesco to fire a ball out for Nawqanitawase’s second.  

The Knights barely kept it together when they held up Lindsay Collins and stopped Robert Toia from going in, but they did. 

They were hanging on by a thread, but they used that thread to haul themselves back into it. 

They were rewarded for their courage under fire when they wound up for their last big punch, because it landed true. Greg Marzhew’s late try was just about the only chance they had in the entire second half.

By rights, they shouldn’t have been near. But by rights they shouldn’t have been here at all. Defeat was in the air but they refused to breathe until the siren. 

This time, almost 30 years after their first premiership, the Darren Albert moment did not come for them. There are no premiership heroes but that doesn’t mean there aren’t heroes still.

Francis Manuleleua, in just his 15^th NRL game, was magnificent in defeat, scoring a try in the first half after running a line that was a piece of rugby league art. 

He and backrow partner Jermaine McEwan call themselves “The Bruise Crew” and they’ll have as many as they dished out while prop Cody Hopwood made 46 tackles which is more than his age (20) and his number of NRL appearances (18) combined. 

Ponga was their best and not just for his try. His defence was stellar; he threw himself into collisions and refused to give up on anything. 

The captain – and he is the captain now, when once he was just the bloke who led them onto the field – was close to tears at the end of the match. 

His people left the ground in the horrible daze that comes only when the greatest prize has been ripped from your hands, but they could not have asked for more from their team.  

The Knights could have played better – a couple of passes were loose and some of their work under the high ball wasn’t great — but it is difficult to imagine a way they could have fought harder. 

They cannot take a premiership trophy home, but they can take plenty of hope. 

The future might feel like it doesn’t matter now but between the young forwards, the return of Dylan Brown, Trey Mooney, Jacob Saifiti and Phoenix Crossland combined with Newcastle, it makes it very unlikely they’ll have to wait another 25 years for another shot. 

But you never know. Each chance at a premiership can be the last. 

That’s why it’s important, if they were fated to go down, that they did it like this, why men of steel and coal had to leave a little piece of themselves out there. 

Their city will be proud of them. Their people will be proud of them. 

There is little glory in defeat, but after a game like that, there is no shame either.