After the departure of legendary coach Wayne Bennett and the customary lurch he leaves every club in, the Knights have experienced some extremely dark days in the past few seasons, typified by three wooden spoons in a row they gained from 2015-2017.
However, off the back of a bumper two-year recruitment drive and some harsh lessons for their young squad, things are starting to look up in the Hunter, with the Knights hitting a purple patch of five wins in a row. While the squad they have at their disposal is impressive, they have let go of a fair share of talent in the past few seasons that Nathan Brown would no doubt love to have at his disposal currently.
Here are the top 10 players the Knights have let go, not re-signed or released in the last decade.
1. Danny Buderus
No one ever thought the day would come when Danny Buderus wore colours other than the famous red and blue of Newcastle, however, the nightmare became reality for Knights fans at the end of 2009, when the club's hierarchy decided that their highest capped player wouldn’t be re-signed. Buderus would go onto sign with the Leeds Rhinos, with the thought of playing against his beloved Knights being too much.
Even though everyone knows how good Buderus was, I just want to rattle off a few achievements to re-establish the fact. He has won premierships, Dally M Medals, Origin series, has the most caps as NSW captain and the most consecutive appearances for the Blues, hell the Knights have even named a medal after him.
Which made it all the more peculiar when they opted not to re-sign their favourite son at the end of 2009 when he was still in more than solid form.
Over the next two seasons, the Knights struggled substantially to replace Buderus, deploying Isaac De Gois in the hooker jersey with varying effect. De Gois’ up and down form eventually led to the Knights bringing Buderus back to fill the problem position that they needn’t have created at the beginning of 2012.
In his last two seasons in blue and red, Buderus displayed why they never should have let him leave. Utilising his canny ball-playing and probing runs out of dummy half to once again terrorise opposition teams. His consistent form even lead to him being selected at hooker for the Blues in Game I of the 2012 State of Origin series, however sadly for Buderus and Blues fans he had to pull out due to injury.
How doesn’t kirt Gidley get a mention?
Not much there is a great loss I would have thought except maybe Tariq Sims. He’s been good at Saints but not quite like at NQ before the broken legs – at that time I thought was almost Tallis/Ben Kennedy-like. Nothing against Sims, but horrific injuries like his take their toll. Boyd wasn’t that great at Newcastle – I thought Saints got the best years out of him and he hasn’t been as good back at Brisbane as he was at Kogarah/WIN. I don’t count Buderus as a loss – he’d just reached the end of a great career at Newie (brilliant work Saints – he trialled with us and we knocked him back, just like we passed on Thurston – nice one Peter Doust).