It’s the biggest spectacle in Australian sport, at least since Kylie Minogue lit up the MCG last Saturday. The NRL grand final is upon us, and on Sunday night millions of people with no skin in the game will be forced to pick a side by their family, friends, partners, or the rest of their local pub.
When your team is not playing, choosing who to barrack for in rugby league comes down to one principle: class warfare. Should neutrals back the Newcastle Knights, the mulleted, working-class sons of the Hunter Valley? Or do eastside heavyweights the Sydney Roosters deserve your love?
Newcastle Knights
I should get two things out of the way. First, I am not the Alex McKinnon who used to play for Newcastle. This has been a source of confusion for many people over the last 12 years, including my own mum, who once asked me when I got a job writing for Fox Sports.
Second, as a lifelong Penrith Panthers fan, this is physically painful for me to write. Not only did the Knights end the Panthers’ dreams of a fifth premiership in six years on the weekend – they did it with 12 men on the field for more than half the game, coming from behind in what is already being called one of the greatest games in rugby league history. And they broke Nathan Cleary’s leg along the way.
As much as I might personally wish confusion and dismay upon them, the Knights are unquestionably the people’s choice this weekend. Since joining the league in 1988, they’ve been a totemic presence in Newcastle. A working-class team in a working-class city, the Knights and Newcastle have shared their ups and downs for almost 40 years.
It’s been 25 years since homegrown hero Andrew Johns last led the Knights to a premiership. Since then, Newcastle have made headlines more for financial dramas than on-field success. The mining magnate Nathan Tinkler bought the club in 2011 and spent the next three years running it into the ground. He only gave up control when Knights players and staff were no longer being paid. In 2014, McKinnon broke his spine in a dangerous tackle, the trauma of which contributed to legendary coach Wayne Bennett leaving the club.
Three straight wooden spoons followed, and they haven’t made a serious finals run since – until this year. All of a sudden, everything clicked. Big-money stars like Kalyn Ponga and Dylan Brown started firing. Talented locals nurtured in the Knights’ junior pathways, such as Bradman Best, Fletcher Sharpe and Phoenix Crossland, came into their own. A team that came dead last in 2025 is now in the grand final.
Having finished sixth on the ladder, they are massive outsiders to win – no team in the NRL era has won the grand final from outside the top four. But the team with more men-with-mullets-named-Fletcher than any other has slain giants to make it this far.
Barrack for if: You are committed to the struggle of the proletariat.
Barrack against if: You have bourgeois tendencies.
Sydney Roosters
This is … a hard sell. The Roosters are the dictionary definition of an establishment club – a historic pedigree, enormously successful, ludicrously cashed-up and representing a part of Sydney that cares more for AFL and rugby union these days than The Greatest Game Of All.
They’re also consistently, annoyingly, good. They have 15 premierships under their belt already, two of them in the last decade, and have missed the finals just once in that time. Along with the Melbourne Storm and the Panthers, they make up the NRL’s big three – the clubs that are always in contention for titles while other teams struggle for lasting success.
There’s not nothing to like about this year’s Roosters. Mark Nawaqanitawase is probably the game’s single most exciting player to watch. He does things on a football field that make the rest of the incredibly talented professional athletes out there look like enthusiastic amateurs. Sunday will be his last game in the NRL before he jets off to play rugby in Japan, and he won’t want to go without a premiership ring.
Sam Walker may look like a sickly Dickensian orphan, but the young playmaker stamped his authority on the game this year, coming back early from what was supposed to be a season-ending ankle injury to end the Dolphins’ dreams of a debut grand final last Friday. Winger Daniel Tupou is the game’s quiet achiever, racking up the third-highest number of tries of any player in NRL history. Enforcer Victor Radley is enormous fun, providing he can stay out of the sin bin for five minutes.
Precious few neutrals will back the Roosters, but the Tricolours have always preferred being feared to being loved. Olympic Park will be heaving with feral Novocastrians on Sunday, but there’s nothing one of the NRL’s most loathed teams loves better than spoiling a party.
Barrack for if: You just can’t get past what Crossland did to Cleary’s leg.
Barrack against if: You’re anyone else.
