KNIGHTS winger Cooper Vuna will use this weekend's trip home to Auckland to discuss his future with his parents and manager.
Vuna is considering a two-season contract offer from the Knights but it has dragged on longer than he or the club had hoped. Knights operations manager Warren Smiles will meet with Vuna's agent tomorrow morning, and the Knights anticipate an answer shortly afterwards.
When, or if, he signs, exactly what name will Vuna scribble at the bottom of the contract?
Vuna's first name is Kerry. Cooper is his middle name.
"I didn't want to be called Kerry in footy. Cooper's better," Vuna told Big League magazine's Little League insert last week.
"When I was young, playing league and union, the people that knew me called me 'Coops' or Cooper, but the first name the school kept calling me was Kerry.'
* The Central Newcastle Knights and Newcastle's NSW Rugby League junior representative teams will keep the home fires burning while the NRL and National Youth Competition squads are in Auckland this weekend.
The Central Knights will try to bounce back from last Saturday's 44-18 loss to Auckland Vulcans when they play Manly in a NSW Cup game at Brookvale Oval from 11am tomorrow.
Beaten by Parramatta in both grades last Saturday, the Knights0 take on the Bulldogs at Crest Stadium today in Harold Matthews (under 16s) at noon and SG Ball (under 18s) at 1.30pm.
* The bitterness and bitchiness of another Knights election campaign is almost over, and all will be revealed at the club's annual general meeting on Wednesday night.
For the first time, members are voting for seven directors instead of five after they voted overwhelmingly at an extraordinary meeting after last year's AGM to cut the number of Newcastle Rugby League-appointed directors from four to two.
The postal ballot closes on Monday afternoon, votes will be counted on Tuesday, winners and losers notified individually on Wednesday morning, then the results officially declared that night to the members who attend the AGM at EAS.
All indications are that first-time candidates Helen Scott and Bob Lyons will miss out. That will leave the other nine contenders former players Tony Butterfield and Rob Tew, founding father Leigh Maughan, solicitor Peter Bale, and incumbents Peter Corcoran, Nicholas Dan, Mark Fitzgibbon, Paul Harragon and Allan McKeown jockeying for seven vacancies.
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