The 2026 Glass Half Full Thread

[Mr_Knightside]

Hey everyone.

I know we’ve got plenty of reasons to be negative at the moment but I just wanted to throw in a bit of positivity now that we’re looking forward to 2026.

By no means do I think we’ll be title contenders but I see plenty of reasons why we can make heaps of improvement and at least get ourselves up around finals contention again in 2026.

IMO The two key issues for us in 2025 were squad depth and coaching.

Coaching - we’ve literally got a completely new coaching setup. Which is justified, I really think the jobs of AOB, Green and to a lesser extent McDermott were untenable after this year and I’d rather new coaches come in and we get a fresh look at everything and get the players outside of their comfort zone again. The overall strategy in attack seemed to be absolutely terrible under the AOB/Green tenure but now we’ve got Holbrook who is known for coaching an attacking style and we’ve got this Hales bloke who was the attack coach at Manly who have typically been a strong attacking side so on this front I think we can expect to see a dramatic improvement in our attack next year.

Further to that I feel that the depth is better in 2026. Out front row is a bit of a worry still because Jacob is our only really experienced and established first grade front rower but at least we’ve brought a bunch of guys in who should be really hungry for an opportunity and pushing each other. Trey Mooney would probably have 70-80 first grade games under his belt already if he hadn’t been at the Raiders over the last few years.

We’ve also dramatically improved our key positions. Brown in for Cogger and Sandon Smith probably taking over at Hooker from Crossland (therefore moving Phoenix to 13) feels like big upgrades in both spots. We also still keep Phoenix as a tackle machine and ball distributor which are his strengths and Sandon can run the ball from 9 a lot more.

On top of all that we don’t really have many guys playing international footy this off-season and if there’s a silver lining to the KP/Lucas/Sharpe injuries it is that they’re not all banged up going into 2026 and have had plenty of time to recover and get a full pre-season in.

On top of that one of our major issues in games this year was our error rate. I believe we completed at just over 70% for the year which lowest in the comp which just isn’t good enough. But it’s a fairly easy thing to diagnose and fix really and a lot of it came down to inexperience.

I guess when you hit the bottom like we did this year the only way is up and at least we’ve made big changes to the coaching staff and our playing roster in response to that. So yeah I think we have plenty of reasons to feel more positive in 2026.

Anyway just my opinion, you’re welcome to disagree with me just be reasonable in your responses haha.

 

[ryan.a87]

Totally agree on all your points

I know I’m biased, but full strength, and now with the right coaching, I can really see us making the 8

our most obvious glaring issues in 2025 was the coaching and a handbrake for a halfback

coaching has been massively improved
And our halfback will either be Brown, an international half (admittedly at 6) or Smith, who showed lots of promise at roosters

I’m actually very optimistic about next year, we just need to stay relatively injury free

 

[The Axe of Druss]

Getting another solid experienced front rower would make me feel a lot better about 2026. Probably a tough ask given the lack of middles on the market for next year so we may have to suck it up until 2027

Aside from that I think there is plenty of reason to be optimistic about our chances next year. I dont think we'll quite make the 8 but like the Tigers this year, I think anything above the bottom 4 is a win

 

[alexwilliams_66692007]

 

[macavity]

Getting another solid experienced front rower would make me feel a lot better about 2026. Probably a tough ask given the lack of middles on the market for next year so we may have to suck it up until 2027

Aside from that I think there is plenty of reason to be optimistic about our chances next year. I dont think we'll quite make the 8 but like the Tigers this year, I think anything above the bottom 4 is a win

I reckon Mooney was probably the best we could hope for given what was available. Add Saulo, Hola and Sullivan on top of that and we have effectively a new front row squad.

 

[The Axe of Druss]

I reckon Mooney was probably the best we could hope for given what was available. Add Saulo, Hola and Sullivan on top of that and we have effectively a new front row squad.

Yes its new and also very inexperienced as far as NRL appearances go.

I guess Frizz will be in the rotation too

 

[slotmachine]

Add Saulo, Hola and Sullivan on top of that and we have effectively a new front row squad.

There is one player there you'd want to see play more than 5 games next year. Sullivan struggles off the bench in Cup.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Knights scrape into the 8, if only because you can be pretty shit and still jag 11/12 wins with some luck and a soft draw.

Even this year we dropped two games against the Tits that should have been gimmes and were really unlucky against the chooks and warriors, that's ten wins right there.

 

[macavity]

There is one player there you'd want to see play more than 5 games next year. Sullivan struggles off the bench in Cup.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Knights scrape into the 8, if only because you can be pretty shit and still jag 11/12 wins with some luck and a soft draw.

Even this year we dropped two games against the Tits that should have been gimmes and were really unlucky against the chooks and warriors, that's ten wins right there.

Yeah Sullivan seemed to just disappear.

I think Mooney and Saulo are the ones that will start in the NRL, with Saf and Frizz.

 

[perverse]

There is one player there you'd want to see play more than 5 games next year. Sullivan struggles off the bench in Cup.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Knights scrape into the 8, if only because you can be pretty shit and still jag 11/12 wins with some luck and a soft draw.

Even this year we dropped two games against the Tits that should have been gimmes and were really unlucky against the chooks and warriors, that's ten wins right there.

This for sure, and just having Sharpe, Brown and Ponga on the field more often than not would be a plus.

 

[Knight Tales]

If we can show scoring points regularly are no longer a problem for us, then I will take whatever follows.

 

[Mr_Knightside]

If we can show scoring points regularly are no longer a problem for us, then I will take whatever follows.

To an extent it really is that simple.

There were 5 games up to round 20 (that we lost) when scoring more than 20 points would have won us the game, then there’s another 2 games where we would have needed a little more than that but if score one more try than we did then we win the game. So in my mind that’s 7 extra games that we could have won with a competent attack.

That’s not even factoring in the likelihood that if we’d won even 3/7 or 4/7 of those games then I suspect our attitude and defence probably would’ve have fallen off a cliff from round 21 onward because we still would have been in the finals hunt so not outrageous to think that we could have jagged another couple of wins in the last 6-7 weeks too.

Basically, if our coaches were able to coach us to even be a mid-tier attacking side this year I think we would have won around 10-12 games and probably finished around 7th-11th on the ladder.

But hey that’s all hypothetical, and instead the brains trust decided to coach us into a pit and we were the worst attacking team in about 3 decades.

 

[Knight Tales]

And by regularly I mean our execution in the red zone becomes near perfect. Cos that is our only way out of the mess we are in. We have shown we can defend for long periods, despite it all imploding in the final third of last season.

 

[Mr_Knightside]

And by regularly I mean our execution in the red zone becomes near perfect. Cos that is our only way out of the mess we are in. We have shown we can defend for long periods, despite it all imploding in the final third of last season.

Our red zone attack needs to be good but doesn’t need to be near perfect if we’re also playing attacking footy at other points on the field. One of the defining parts of the AOB era was the refusal to play any footy between our own goal line and the opposition 20m zone. So that’s 80% of the field (not including in-goals) where we basically chose not to do anything except 5 hitups followed by an uncontested kick.

Jeez I hope that Holbrook and Hales introduce a license to offload the ball and move it early to our outside backs when we have a bit of space as we’re coming out of our own half.

I’m also excited to see some sort of KP/Brown/Sharpe/Smith combo running the ball regularly. Surely that would have to be one of the most electric ball-running spine combos in the NRL next year.

 

[Zoidberg]

Imagine actually utilising a left side attack with Sharpe, Ponga and Best.

 

[Knight Tales]

Brown started training with KP and Best a few weeks ago. Moved immediately after Parra’s season ended. Already primed to go. Really looking forward to seeing how he performs for NZ. A little baby due soon. I could be very wrong, but I really think this kid is going to show a lot of folks up. He will certainly have more of an identity here than at Parra.

 

[NK Arsenal]

I’d like to think we aren’t a bottom 4 club next season, but I am doubtful we will make the 8. Would love to be proven wrong on the latter though.

I think 2027 with an improved cap position should correlate to a more successful period for the club.