I have the utmost respect to you Mac and the rest of the knights fans that call it how it is down there.
It's been a shit fight at your club for a long long time, I don't know how you lot put up with it.
As an outsider, I feel the when the Knights were at their best, the squad was about 80% local lads and the rest hard working ring ins, I feel that recipe has been ignored for a long time and the results are what they are. Happy to be corrected if you think this is BS on my behalf.
On the Newy stadium, I've been to the 3 iterations of it, the latest is okay and would be much better if the end hills were turned into seated terraces. And obviously the big screen needs to be sorted out.
The biggest gripe I always had was the location was always pretty shit, there's not much around it. If you were to do it again, would you put it at West Newcastle on the sports fields?
location is what the hunter sports precinct plan is supposed to fix. The area surrounding the stadium is the last major development envelope in the metro/inner area of Newcastle.
The plan is to redevelop the whole precinct with a proper entertainment centre (our current one is a 35yo leaky tin shed), restaurant and entertainment precinct, new sporting facilities, high density residential, the light rail is supposed to be extended there too. It would effectively be the new “centre” of Newy with thousands of residents and jobs, and well overdue and badly needed community facilities.
they also want to connect it to the gonninans yards the other side of Griffiths road. I can’t overestimate how huge this is for Newcastle.
The business case has been completed and stacks up tremendously well, certainly better than any stadium redevelopment in Sydney.
funding though? Crickets.
it will be storm water drains and muddy paddocks for a while yet it seems.
, because the state government only wants our money, not to actually spend any here.
as for the club, we doomed it to be a basket case when we didn’t extend smithy 15 years ago. It really was a sliding doors moment. And the club has always been too poor and lazy with juniors to make anything of them. We got lucky with a golden generation and haven’t done anything since. Our hyped kids never reach any great heights, and our absolute best end up elsewhere (watch Pezet be a gun next)
good luck Chris.
