BY the halfway point in Newcastle's 2009 campaign, the silence of Brian Smith's critics spoke volumes.
After the write-off that was his first season in charge, followed by the undeniable improvement of 2008, the Knights continued to flourish.
Twelve games in, they had eight wins to their name and were fourth on the ladder. Five of those victories had come against teams who would feature in the play-offs - Gold Coast, Manly, St George Illawarra, Canterbury and Brisbane.
Knights fans were daring to dream.
If only they had known what was just around the corner, on and off the field.
At the end of the previous season, Knights officials had been left facing an unenviable dilemma.
Smith had one more year to run on his contract and was eager to learn if he featured in the club's long-term plans.
"From my point of view, the longer it takes, the longer I'll look around," he told the Newcastle Herald.
"So let's just wait and see. It's up to them at this stage. If they decide not to progress it, I'm a working coach and I'll be looking for work."
The quandary for Newcastle management was that they would have to take a punt.
The Knights had undoubtedly improved in 2008, but they still missed the finals.
What if they re-signed Smith and his team slipped backwards in 2009?
Instead they had an each-way bet, offering Smith a one-season extension, with an incentive clause for an extra year if the Knights qualified for the top four.
Smith accepted the offer but was clearly disappointed.
He realised that if his team struggled in 2009, he was likely to be replaced 12 months down the track, if not before.
Early in the season, he secretly asked Knights chairman Rob Tew for permission, which was granted, to explore other options.
In hindsight, the catalyst may well have been the 38-6 thrashing of the Roosters in round 10, when the Knights took an injury-riddled team to Sydney Football Stadium and embarrassed their star-studded opposition.
Roosters coach Brad Fittler was clearly under pressure.
In 2008, his first full year at the helm, his team finished in the top four.
A year later the same group of players were floundering and would eventually finish with the wooden spoon.
In June, a third party approached the Roosters on behalf of Smith and within weeks it was announced he would be leaving Newcastle at the end of 2009, having accepted a lucrative four-year deal with the tricolours, worth a reported $600,000 per season.
At a press conference to explain his shock decision, Smith said "I think we all knew what that meant" when the Knights declined to re-sign him to a longer deal.
"From a business point of view, it was simple," he said.
"There's a bit too much been made for my liking of the money issue, but the tenure issue was definitely a big thing. I'm 55 years old . . . and I was flattered by a longer offer of tenure, particularly at a strong club like the Roosters have been."
I was flattered by a longer offer of tenure, particularly at a strong club like the Roosters have been.
BRIAN SMITH
The Knights said they would immediately search the marketplace for a replacement, but Smith's assistant, Rick Stone, appeared the logical favourite.
In the meantime, Smith said he was looking forward to steering the Knights into the play-offs and hopefully finishing 2009 on a high note.
Trouble was, the essential bond between a coach and his troops had been compromised. Newcastle's players had, over the past three years, seen a host of their teammates moved on and treated as expendable.
They were willing to accept that while ever Smith was boss. Now that he was abandoning them for a better offer, they lost respect for the man in charge.
After the revelation that Smith was leaving, Newcastle lost heavily to Manly (44-20), the Roosters (30-18) and Parramatta (40-8), and the Knights board felt compelled to intervene.
When directors sounded out senior players, seeking their opinion of Smith, the unanimous response was: "We're over him".
After a board meeting on Friday, August 14, Tew visited Smith at his Merewether home and asked him to step aside.
Stone was immediately handed the reins, a decision Newcastle's players celebrated with a rousing cheer when they learned at training the following morning.
"I think it's probably a common-sense approach,'' Tew said at a hastily assembled press conference. "Anything other than that would have been a bit silly, really."
Yet just two weeks earlier, Tew said the board was adamant Smith would see out the season.
"It was agreed that he would continue to coach the team through to the end of the year,'' he said. "I'm not aware that anything has changed."
Smith has never discussed his sacking, but released a statement in which he said: "I am disappointed that I have not been able to lead the club into the biggest challenge remaining - a play-off position in 2009. However, I am pleased with the opportunities the Knights have given me in the past three seasons, proud of the base the club now has and honoured to have met and worked with so many passionate league people who make up this club."
A Lakes United junior who played three first-grade games for South Sydney in 1989, Stone had served a lengthy coaching apprenticeship, in particular with the Burleigh Bears on Queensland's Gold Coast.
He had been understudy to Michael Hagan and Smith for four years. "I said to the boys my relationship, from assistant coach to head coach, will definitely be different," Stone said.
"I understand that. I'd like to think my personality won't change. I'm not Brian Smith. I'm not a clone of Brian Smith. "I'm Rick Stone and I'm going to probably evolve my own style ... I haven't got a record as an NRL player, that's for sure, but I've done a fair apprenticeship as a coach and an assistant coach."
When Stone replaced Smith, after 20 rounds, Newcastle had slipped to ninth. Starting with an immediate success at home to Melbourne (26-14), the new coach was able to secure three wins from their final four games to qualify seventh in the play-offs.
As they prepared for their do-or-die final against Canterbury at Sydney's Telstra Stadium, Stone faced a dilemma over the fitness of hooker Isaac De Gois (knee) and back-rower Zeb Taia (shoulder).
He gambled on both. De Gois subsequently broke down on the second tackle of the game and would need a knee reconstruction. Taia was basically a passenger throughout.
Not surprisingly, Canterbury won 26-12, and Stone admitted that, in hindsight, perhaps he shouldn't have "rolled the dice".
"It's a gamble that we took and one obviously that didn't pay off," Stone said. "That hurts, early in the game. No doubt that had an effect ... we got a couple of different opinions about Isaac and we thought we'd roll the dice a bit. Isaac and Zeb did get through a searching fitness test [on Friday] and we decided to play them. Obviously that hasn't really helped us, that's for sure."
Newcastle's season was over, except for skipper Kurt Gidley and Kiwi centre Junior Sa'u, who both featured in the Four Nations series in England. Gidley, incidentally, also became the third successive Novocastrian to skipper NSW at Origin level, following Johns and Buderus, when he played fullback in the Blues' 2-1 series loss.
Gidley and Sa'u had barely returned from the Old Dart when a scandal detonated that would cause their club untold embarrassment and reputational damage.
After a police surveillance operation, Knights prop Danny Wicks was arrested in his car on December 16 and charged with six counts of drug supply and two counts of possessing a prohibited drug.
Police found cocaine and amphetamines in Wicks' car and alleged he had supplied "hundreds of kilos" of illicit drugs in recent months. He was immediately stood down by Knights officials, although potentially losing a lucrative three-season contract appeared the least of his worries. If the charges stuck, the 23-year-old was almost certainly heading to jail. Club chairman Tew and chief executive Burraston fronted a press conference, at which they vehemently denied their club had a "drug culture".
"Professional footballer, average Joe Blow, it's just something I won't condone and the club won't condone, and my chairman [Rob Tew] sits beside me and he won't condone anything like that either,'' Burraston said.
"If charges are laid and if he is found guilty, well then he has no place in this organisation ... if charges are laid and proven, then I don't think he has a place in our game, but I'm happy to let that run its course first then make a decision after that."
A week later, Wicks volunteered to terminate his $240,000-a-year contract, walking away from the Knights without receiving "one cent" of a payout, a "selfless" act according to his manager, Steve Gillis.
"I have a very high regard for the club, its supporters and its sponsors," Wicks said in a statement. "Importantly, the players have been put under enormous scrutiny and pressure, which they do not deserve. It's the right thing for me to do so the club can move forward. The Knights have a strict code of conduct which I have always supported and I feel obliged to disassociate myself from the club until my matter is resolved."
Burraston added that to the "best of our knowledge" Knights officials were confident no other players were involved and "nor do we believe that we have a drug culture in our club". Coming barely two years after Andrew Johns' candid admissions, his protestations were not universally accepted as gospel.
Speculation soon surfaced that Wicks was not the only Knight to have attracted the attention of police, and that the end-of-season wake after the loss to the Bulldogs, in particular, was under scrutiny.
It was a public-relations disaster. Possibly the worst in the club's history. A season that, three months earlier, appeared to be shaping up nicely had ended in abject disgrace, leaving the Knights to deal with rumours and innuendo, another ugly stain on the club's reputation.
For both players and officials, Christmas 2009 would be a sombre occasion.
Hard Yards: The Story of the Newcastle Knights. Available to purchase from theherald.mybigcommerce.com/books/ $19.95
