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Newcastle Herald

How long can Kalyn Ponga's trademark swagger hold up?

Kalyn Ponga Knights Newcastle Eels David Fifita Titans Adam OBrien Nathan Brown NRL Andrew Johns

THE good news for Kalyn Ponga is that David Fifita has been playing on the left edge this season.

The bad news is that Fifita is also quite capable of playing on the right side, as he did in Gold Coast's 34-24 win against the Knights at Cbus Stadium last season, when he scored a typically bulldozing try.

In light of Ponga's performance during the 43-12 drubbing from Parramatta on Friday night, what are the odds that Titans coach Justin Holbrook will ask Fifita to switch flanks when the Titans visit Newcastle on Sunday week?

You don't need to be a master analyst to know that Ponga has been defending - or trying to - third man in on Newcastle's left.

You also don't need any great insight to realise that Fifita, like a 115-kilogram wrecking ball, can demolish brick walls when in the mood.

And unfortunately for Ponga, his defence against the Eels was unlikely at any point to be mistaken for a brick wall.

Immediately after the match, the official NRL statistics had Newcastle's captain down for 11 tackles, with 10 misses. Those numbers have since been revised to 13 tackles, eight missed tackles and two ineffective tackles.

By any count, the bottom line is pretty much exactly the same - the off-season decision to switch Newcastle's highest-profile and highest-paid player from fullback to five-eighth is again under intense scrutiny.

This first became an issue back in round two, when Ponga - having sat out the final six games of last season after a spate of concussions - was knocked out trying to tackle Wests Tigers back-rower Asu Kepaoa, necessitating another five weeks on the sidelines and a trip to Canada for state-of-the-art scans and neurological assessment.

During his time out, no less a judge than the eighth Immortal (and Knights coaching consultant) Andrew Johns declared in his Sydney Morning Herald newspaper column that the club needed to come up with "a solid plan about what his future looks like and how they can protect him on the field".

Knights coach Adam O'Brien duly eased his most valuable asset back into action off the bench against North Queensland and, to the collective relief of rugby league fans, he emerged unscathed from his comeback match.

Then against Parramatta, as if there was nothing to worry about in the first place, Ponga was back defending at five-eighth, third man in on the left-hand side. And just as they did in a pre-season trial, the Eels ruthlessly exploited the chink they had identified in the Knights' armour.

Suddenly it appears the issue for O'Brien is not just whether the Queensland Origin representative can avoid concussions, it is also how long he can persist with this controversial positional switch if Ponga keeps getting exposed in defence.

O'Brien's predecessor Nathan Brown took the same gamble four years ago, only to cut his losses after two-and-a-half games and reinstate Ponga to fullback, the position he has played for the vast majority of his career.

Brown did not abandon the plan because playing five-eighth was inhibiting Ponga's attack. He was simply missing so many tackles the coach accepted that discretion was the better part of valour.

Of course, Ponga was not Robinson Crusoe against the Eels, in a game O'Brien described as a "horrible performance" by his team, who missed a collective 61 tackles. If they weren't so soft in the middle of the ruck, Parramatta would not have spent most of the match playing on the front foot against a disorganised defensive line.

But along with his speed, footwork and ball-playing skills, Ponga's greatest attribute is his swagger.

At his best, he exudes a confidence that rubs off on his teammates, as he showed in Origin last year. How long can that swagger hold up, if self-doubt starts to creep in?

One way or the other, Newcastle's entire season is hanging on the outcome.

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