If the Knights are going to make the finals for the third straight year, Kalyn Ponga needs to have the best season of his career.

Not another one which is hampered by injury.

Or one where he picks and chooses when he gets involved during games.

He can’t stand back and let play unfold when he is far and away Newcastle’s most dynamic attacking option.

Mitchell Pearce is no longer the chief playmaker, which allowed Ponga to be a strike weapon from fullback. Pearce would cop a lot of the heat when the Knights underperformed, which for the most part was fair enough as he was the marquee recruit brought to the club to steer them around.

Pearce’s four-year stint could be viewed as a success insofar as he came to a club that had received three straight wooden spoons and rebuilt them to respectability, culminating in first-round finals appearances the past two years.

Ponga is the Knight who can take them further. 

As they say in the classics, “it’s a bold strategy, Cotton” to make him captain this year. He’s always seemed a little too cool for school so making him the leader before his 24th birthday could bring out his hitherto hidden intensity or backfire and affect his own performances if he’s distracted by captaincy duties.

Newcastle’s 2001 premiership-winning coach Michael Hagan hit the nail on the head in his column for The Roar on Wednesday when he said “he must be their best player every week if they hope to force their way into the top eight again”.

If he finishes in the top five of Dally M voting, Newcastle will be top-four threats but if he’s good without being great, they will stay mired in mid-table mediocrity or slip out of the playoff equation altogether.

He is more than capable – he was runner-up to Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck in 2018 and was 10th two years ago.

Despite a reputation for being injury plagued, the Maroons fullback has played 20, 20, 19 and 15 games in his four seasons at Newcastle since being lured from the Cowboys as a teenage prospect with a lucrative offer. 

He missed the first month last season due to off-season shoulder surgery and the Knights split the 14 games he played before bowing out in the qualifying final 28-20 to Parramatta.

Ponga produced 15 try assists as part of 25 total try involvements to outshine Pearce (10 and 14) and fellow playmaker Jake Clifford (11 and 23) in these areas.

His 16 line break assists were also the best from the Newcastle side with utility Connor Watson (14) surprisingly next best – the Knights are going to miss him now he’s at the Roosters much more than people expect. That shows the halves were not creating enough attack for coach Adam O’Brien.

The Knights’ tally of 448 for the season was only marginally ahead of Brisbane (446) with Canterbury’s anaemic attack (340) by far the worst. 

Jake Clifford. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

It’s amazing in many ways that Newcastle were able to finish seventh on the ladder and scraped together a 12-12 record considering they had the worst for-and-against return of any finals team in the NRL era at -143 and they ranked near the bottom in most major attacking stats – 14th for line breaks (4.1 per game), 13th for tackle breaks (26.4), 

They actually spent the fourth-most time in the opposition’s 20-metre zone at 28 tackles per game but when they threatened the line, they came up short way too often.

And that’s where Ponga needs to step up. Pearce’s replacement, Adam Clune, is a clever player who has already impressed Newcastle’s new coaching consultant who knows a thing or two about halfback play, Andrew Johns.

But he does not have the game-breaking ability that Ponga possesses. 

The Knights are also at a disadvantage with their first-choice hooker, Jayden Brailey, tearing his Achilles in the pre-season so their spine has had further alterations with Chris Randall assuming the No.9 jersey.