Adam O’Brien has done enough to earn an extension in the eyes of the Newcastle Knights bosses, with the powerbrokers in the Hunter plotting a contract offer that would see the 95-game helmsman the club’s longest-serving coach.
It’s a huge turnaround from a few months ago, when the Knights bosses were sounding out replacements for the 45-year-old. Newcastle looked in danger of missing another finals series and O’Brien’s head was on the chopping block.
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Now, O’Brien has guided the Knights to their first finals win in his tenure—which began in 2020—and the club is in the midst of a 10-game win-streak ahead of this week’s Warriors clash.
Newcastle’s chiefs are planning to offer him a new deal that will cover 2024 to 2026.
If he sees out those three years at least, O’Brien will become the longest-serving coach in the history of the club. Right now he sits on 95 games in charge behind Michael on 154. Hagan is the only Knights boss who has ever cracked triple digits at the helm, which O’Brien will do at the start of the 2024 NRL season.
Since joining in 2020, the ex-Roosters and Storm assistant coach has clocked up a 46.3 percent win rate and made finals in three out of the four seasons he’s been in charge.
Newcastle has been a revolving door of coaches since Hagan in 2006, not least Wayne Bennett in the early 2010s. The supercoach was preceded by Brian Smith and Rick Stone and followed by Nathan Brown, Danny Buderus (interim coach), and Kristian Woolf. Brown was in charge when the club sunk to its third and fourth wooden spoons in 2017 and 2018.
Interestingly, Fox has reported Knights chief executive Phil Gardner did sound out options to replace O’Brien, including Michael Maguire, Paul McGregor, and Des Hasler, the last of whom has since signed with the Gold Coast Titans for next season.
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Win or lose on Saturday though, O’Brien has clearly done enough in the eyes of Gardner and the powerbrokers in the Hunter to earn at least the extension offer at the end of the year.
