FOR a month or more, off-field issues seemed to dominate all narrative involving the Newcastle Knights.
Mitchell Barnett's send-off and subsequent suspension.
Anthony Milford's court case and the NRL integrity-unit investigation and sanction that will prevent him from playing for Newcastle until round 11.
And, of course, Kalyn Ponga's lunch date with Wayne Bennett, contractual soap opera and eventual announcement last week that the Knights had extended their captain's deal by five seasons.
But then full-time sounded at McDonald Jones Stadium on Sunday and it became apparent that Newcastle's real problems are on the field.
The Knights have now slumped to five consecutive defeats, culminating in a 39-2 drubbing from Parramatta that I would suggest rates as their most insipid performance since a 46-4 hammering from Wests Tigers at Campbelltown late in 2019, after which then coach Nathan Brown cleared his desk and disappeared out the back door.
Words such as "sorry", "awful", "embarrassing" and "not acceptable" were offered by Ponga and coach Adam O'Brien at the post-match press conference, and while they were honest, raw, heartfelt sentiments, they're not going to make one iota of difference when the Knights run out this weekend against Melbourne Storm.
O'Brien summed it up when he said of his former club: "The mob rolling into town next week aren't going to take it easy on us."
Somehow, in the space of seven days, the Knights have to rectify what Ponga described on Sunday as a "lack of energy, lack of want".
O'Brien now faces the greatest challenge of his brief career as a head coach.
The Knights are two and five. No Newcastle team has ever recovered from such a position to reach the finals.
After Sunday's clash with the Storm, who have won their past 10 encounters against Newcastle, they face North Queensland Cowboys in Townsville, where they have lost eight of their past nine games.
In a fortnight, they could conceivably be two and seven, at which point their focus will inevitably turn from making the play-offs to avoiding the wooden spoon.
And this is perhaps as good a time as any to pose a simple question: Are the Knights as bad a team as their recent results would suggest?
Between 2015 and 2017, when Newcastle were sheepishly ensconced in the competition cellar, nobody was denying that they were the worst team in the NRL
Not even former coach Brown, who claimed that when he first arrived at the club, he told his wife the Knights were "definitely going to run last for the first two years."
This season there were surely higher expectations.
The Knights have finished seventh in their past two campaigns, and their long-suffering fans were entitled to believe they were building towards bigger and better things, especially after opening the year with comprehensive wins against Sydney Roosters (20-6) and Wests Tigers (26-4).
Instead they just appear to have fallen off a cliff.
Injuries and suspensions, of course, have taken a toll, but the Eels also had a host of key personnel missing on Sunday and got on with the job.
For the record, the Knights had three Test players and three others with Origin experience in their squad who lined up against Paramatta.
Yet for the second game this season they finished tryless. In their past four games, they have scored just 24 points.
Suddenly the harsh media spotlight that has been focusing on Michael Maguire and Trent Barrett has turned to O'Brien.
How does he, firstly, stop the slide and, secondly, instill in his players the belief that they can beat Melbourne, who have dominated most of them for their entire careers?
His future, unfortunately, is in the hands of the same men who showed so little against Parramatta and are now in the eye of the Storm.
