Twelve months ago the Newcastle Knights finished the 2025 season the way they had spent most of it, losing nine games in a row to claim the wooden spoon. This weekend’s result reads very differently. A dramatic 13-12 win over the Dolphins, sealed by Dylan Brown’s first-ever NRL field goal in the 76th minute, has lifted Newcastle firmly into the NRL’s top four after 18 rounds, ending the Dolphins’ club-record run of eight straight wins in the process. The architect of the turnaround is Justin Holbrook, and the manner of it has been more remarkable than the ladder position alone suggests.

Holbrook arrived at Newcastle carrying his own unfinished business. He was sacked by the Gold Coast Titans in 2023 to make way for Des Hasler, with the club citing its ambition to deliver premierships as the reason for the change. The Titans have not made the finals since, while Holbrook remains the last coach to take Gold Coast into September football. At Newcastle he inherited a young roster, a marquee ten-year signing in Dylan Brown, and a defensive reputation in tatters, the Knights lost by 20 or more points ten times in 2025, and conceded 40 or more points in five of those matches.

The turnaround has been built on resilience as much as talent. Newcastle opened 2026 with wins in their first two games, a mark that already stood out given the club had managed only one win in its previous seven Easter Sunday fixtures since 2018. That Easter Sunday hoodoo was broken in style, with a 32-12 demolition of Canberra pushing Newcastle into the top four for the first time in years and marking only the fifth time since 1998 the club had won four or five of its opening five rounds. It came, notably, with nearly half the salary cap unavailable and two of the club’s most important players, fullback Kalyn Ponga and halfback Dylan Brown, sidelined for chunks of the season.

The defining image of that early resilience came in round two, away at Brookvale. Newcastle had built a 30-10 halftime lead over Manly despite losing Ponga to a hamstring injury and Brown to a knee injury within ten minutes of each other, forcing Holbrook to send utility Harrison Graham on for his NRL debut at hooker and shift Phoenix Crossland into the halves. The Knights held on to win 36-16, their biggest score at Brookvale in 28 years. Crossland in particular has been transformed under Holbrook, emerging as a calm director of attack in a spine that has rarely stayed settled for long.

The underlying numbers back up what the results suggest. Through the first ten rounds of 2026, Newcastle had scored 272 points, already just 62 short of their entire 338-point tally from all of 2025, effectively doubling their scoring rate at the same stage of the season. Much of that has come from a deliberate shift to a wider attacking shape, with 47.6 percent of the Knights’ play-the-balls occurring outside the middle third of the field, third-highest in the league and roughly ten percentage points higher than in any of Holbrook’s previous seasons as a head coach.

None of this means the job is finished. But with the youngest playing group in the competition outside three clubs, and a coach finally getting the credit denied him on the Gold Coast, Newcastle’s rise from wooden spoon to the top four is no accident. It is a rebuild, and it is working.