Mercury sports reporter Josh Callinan takes a closer look at the Maitland Junior Sportsperson of the Year and others who have made the grade since the arrival of an NRL club in the Hunter in 1988.

For many the Newcastle Knights are among the new kids on the rugby league block.

They came onto the scene in more recent times, without the history of older and more established clubs like South Sydney, St George and Manly. 

But for Brock Lamb, it’s all he and his generation have ever known.

Born in Maitland on January 22, Lamb hadn’t celebrated a single birthday when the Knights claimed their first premiership in 1997.

He wasn’t even at school when they backed it up with another title in 2001.

Yet those triumphs and those Hunter-bred stars such as the Johns brothers, Billy Peden and Mark Hughes left their mark on the likes of Lamb, who has travelled with the Knights’ top grade squad as a playmaker for this weekend’s Auckland Nines.

In fact, the red and blue signs have been there all along, even in the early days, according to mother Fiona.

“We have a photo together when he was just a little boy at the ticker tape parade in Newcastle in 1997,” she said.

“He had a little Knights jumper and his cap on back to front. It’s very cute and we get it out every now and then to reminisce.

“That really set the standard.”

In the ensuing years, Lamb was drawn to all sorts of sports but eventually settled on rugby league.

“It didn’t matter what it was he always had a ball in his hand,” Fiona said. “He started out playing soccer with Thornton, then moved to rugby league in under 11s and hasn’t looked back since.

“But he’s always been a Knights boy.”

Lamb first donned the Beresfield Bears uniform before playing the next season with Kurri Kurri, but from under 13s onwards he remained associated with West Maitland.

Since then the former All Saints College student has gone onto earn many representative caps from Maitland juniors and State of Origin age groups all the way through to Australian Schoolboys.

Fellow Maitland product, Knights junior and current Bolwarra Heights-based NSW Cup coach Matt Lantry first saw Lamb when mentoring Miners district sides about five or six years ago.

“Even at 13 or 14, he always had potential,” Lantry said.

“He was a classy five-eighth with all the quality attributes and a little bit of cheekiness.”

However, Lamb’s career pathway has predominately been set at the Knights as part of their various development systems – Harold Matthews, SG Ball, National Youth Competition and now the full-time squad.

“Brock has ticked every box,” Lantry said. “He has gone through the Knights program from 16s, 18s, 20s and into the first grade squad.

“Now he has the opportunity to play at the Nines after training well in the pre-season.”

Others have fallen by the wayside but Lamb, who turned 19 last week, has kept kicking goals at home in the Hunter throughout his teenage years. 

“It’s a credit to Brock that he has been able to meet the requirements year in and year out to continue as part of the program,” Lantry said.

“There is good identification and management in place at the club as well, but in the end it’s all up to the player.”

It is the ideal scenario for any NRL club – a talented player who is locally born and bred, comes through the ­junior program and works his way into a first grade team.

It is the script coaches want to write, a fan favourite, a promoter’s dream.

The grand final winning Johns brothers, dynamic Cessnock duo Andrew and Matthew who attended high school at Maitland’s All Saints College, are prime examples of that.

But it is not always the case.

It is probably the exception rather than the rule.

There are plenty of others from Maitland and the Coalfields who have played first grade for the Knights since the club’s inaugural season of 1988, including Daniel Quinn, Aaron Grainger, Daniel Smailes, Trent Estatheo, Billy Peden and Kurri Kurri junior come Bulldogs hooker for this season Terence Seu Seu. 

However, they don’t all travel the same linear journey has Lamb has.

The high profile cases in point being 1997 Maitland Sportsperson of the Year Mark Hughes, Ryan Stig, Knights forward Robbie Rochow and his brother-in-law, arguably Maitland’s most decorated rugby league player, Greg Bird.

Hughes was a late bloomer. He won a Newcastle Rugby League competition, the third of a historic hat-trick, with Kurri in 1995 as an 18-year-old before he was picked up by the Knights and clinched two national titles in the space of five seasons.

Maitland Pickers product and Australian Schoolboy Stig played Knights juniors, but went up north and triumphed with the Northern Pride in the Queensland Cup before returning to Newcastle with a stunning debut in 2011, only for the devastating Lyme disease to take hold the following year and effectively end his career. 

NSW Country representative Rochow is now a mainstay in the Knights starting line-up and has been in the second-row for the best part of five winters, but the East Maitland Griffins junior was originally ­recruited by the Melbourne Storm after playing first grade for Kurri as a fullback.

And as for Bird, who married Rochow’s sister Becky in 2014, unwanted by the Knights in the early days he forged his controversial career with Cronulla, later the Gold Coast, but most famously for NSW at State of Origin level and as part of a World Cup winning Australian side.

“Greg Bird was a West Maitland junior and I played a lot of my footy with and against him,” Lantry said.

“There was one season around 1997-1998 when we became the first Maitland association side to win a [junior] country championship and Birdy was on the bench.

“But he kept working at it and eventually got an opportunity at 13, made his way into Knights junior teams, picked up an NRL contract and has played many representative games for both his state and country.

“It shows that you don’t have to necessarily come out of the system to make it, there are other ways.”

Maitland products Andrew Everingham and Luke Dorn are also testament to that in the Knights era.

Everingham, who has Philippine family origins, never quite cracked the Knights but burst onto the scene as a 25-year-old in 2012, scoring eight tries in his opening five matches for the South Sydney Rabbitohs before defecting to rugby union in Japan two seasons later.

Dorn, born in 1982, played Knights juniors, but got his shot with the Northern Eagles, Manly and the Sydney Roosters between 2002 and 2004 before moving to England, where he still runs around, and only last season became the highest scoring overseas player in Super League ­history with 642 points. 

“You’re never going to pick up everyone and these days it is a very competitive market out there,” Lantry said.

“But having an NRL team in the Hunter is vital because it gives kids an opportunity to live their dreams here.”

Lantry said this was particularly important when considering the number of league players in the Hunter.

“This is a tremendous nursery,” he said. “Maitland, Newcastle and Group 21 alone sits alongside Penrith as one of the biggest participant regions in Australia.

“We’ve got almost 6500 players whereas an NRL club like the Roosters would be lucky to have 2500.”

Lamb is one of those players and this weekend he will fly the flag in New Zealand having only played recent under-18 deciders in Maitland’s black and white colours.

Meanwhile, back home in Thornton his mother Fiona will be watching intently and nervously as her boy finally fits into that Knights jersey he first wore as a baby. 

A selection of NRL players from Maitland and the Coalfields pre-Knights: