When Newcastle and the Roosters run out at Accor Stadium on Sunday, the rivalry on the surface will be straightforward, a club chasing its first premiership since 2001 against one chasing its first since 2019. Underneath that, though, sits a surprisingly tangled web of shared history. Several key figures in this grand final have wandered between these two clubs at various points in their careers, and one man in the coaching box has done it more than once.

Justin Holbrook’s connection to both clubs is the deepest of anyone involved this weekend, and it runs in both directions across two different careers. As a player, Holbrook turned out for Newcastle, Penrith, and the Roosters during a journeyman halfback career in the early 2000s.

As a coach, he first joined the Roosters as an assistant under Trent Robinson in 2014, staying through 2017 and helping guide the club to a minor premiership in 2015, before departing for a hugely successful stint at St Helens and later the Gold Coast Titans. He returned to the Roosters as Robinson’s assistant again in 2024, before Newcastle came calling in September 2025, appointing him head coach for the 2026 season. Sunday’s grand final will be Holbrook’s first as a head coach in the NRL, coaching against the very club where he spent the better part of a decade as either player or assistant.

Among this weekend’s playing squads, the connections multiply further. Dominic Young’s path between the two clubs has bgone full circle, he debuted for Newcastle in 2021, departed for the Roosters ahead of the 2024 season after being courted by Robinson, then returned to Newcastle in a mid-season move in 2025 when opportunities at the Roosters dried up. He has since re-signed with the Knights through to 2030, suggesting his wandering days are over. Sandon Smith’s path has been more direct, he came through the Roosters system and played there from 2023 through 2025, before moving to Newcastle ahead of this season. When Dylan Brown’s ACL injury opened the halfback jersey in July, Smith made it his own, and his two tries in last week’s preliminary final sent Newcastle into their first grand final since 2001.

Connor Watson’s career has tracked in the opposite direction between the two clubs. He came through the Roosters’ junior system, made his first-grade debut there, then moved to Newcastle in 2018 where he spent several seasons developing into a genuine first-grade regular. He returned to the Roosters in 2020 and has remained there since, now part of the squad chasing this year’s premiership against the very club he once represented.

History offers an even sharper parallel to this year’s halfback situation. In 2018, the Roosters signed Cooper Cronk from Melbourne immediately clouding the future of incumbent halfback Mitchell Pearce. Pearce was moved on, eventually finishing his career at Newcastle, while Cronk went on to win back-to-back premierships with the Roosters in 2018 and 2019. The situation now facing Sandon Smith carries an unmistakable echo of that history, an experienced, premiership-calibre halfback in Daly Cherry-Evans arriving at the Roosters this season, with Smith needing to find a new home to keep his career moving forward. Smith found his at Newcastle, and if the Knights win on Sunday, the parallel with Pearce’s own path, shifted aside at the Roosters, only to find fulfillment at Newcastle, will be impossible to ignore.

Whatever happens on Sunday, this grand final carries more shared DNA between its two competing clubs than most premiership deciders ever do.