Nah mate, Bradford have been gash for years, and I'd struggle to think of any club with a worse reputation.



But we do have an iconic stadium!

Rugby League week are reporting that Willie Mason will be the first player Bennett signs for Brisbane.

Willie is playing as little as 30 minutes a game and struggles to break 50 metres run some games.

He is a shadow of his former self and a disruptive influence off the field, but Wayne seems to love him.

I was at a fund raiser last Friday and Alfie Langer was one of the guest speakers and he thought Bennett coming home would be a good thing and bring back some magic to the Broncos.



In saying that he is close with Bennett and it may further his career with that Club.



I am not so sure, Coaches can be like players where they have their golden run at their peak and then fade.

I think Benny may be past his best and as you say the game has changed and what worked back in the day does not stay that way forever.

Bennett can only sign players that are willing to play for Newcastle - he will have much more success in persuading players to move to Brisbane. Where would you rather live/bring up your family?

There are many nice parts of Newcastle.

The Beaches are pretty nice.

I can't believe people still have 1980s clichéd views of Newcastle.

The steelworks closed nearly 30 years ago.

It has low unemployment.

High average wages.

Is rated by Lonely Planet in it's top 10 places to visit.

The players all live in a suburb near the city centre that's right on one of the world's great surfing beaches, where a world rated surfing contest happens every year.

Something like 60% of players available to play for NSW come from country areas, mostly either Newcastle or Wollongong, and most of them go back there when they retire, because they love the place.

A hell of a lot of players go to Sydney as young guys and bomb out due to having to live in that armpit of the universe.



It only takes 10 minutes to show players they are wrong if they think Newcastle is still a smokey old steelworks town, because they actually took the steelworks down and sent the scrap off to China some 20 years ago.

Frankly, the area where the players live is pretty similar to the Northern Beaches area in Sydney, and if they are absolutely hanging out to see some dragqueens or the gay mardi gra, Sydney is only 2 1/2 hours away.

Does it matter if you go to brisbane or Newcastle because let's face there is always a chance you are going to get bit by a snake or a spider and if you go into the sea there are killer snails ,sharks snakes etc

Yet no wants to live there? Must be the homophobia.

You have friends!!!!????

Swear filter, but I'm sure you worked that out.



Incidently I have plenty of friends, some even born and bread in Newcastle. None of them live there anymore though, they've moved to the armpit, like Newcastles favourite brothers.



They can't have read Lonely planet.

So how has Newcastle changed since much of it's industry disappeared? Many of those lake areas to the south were there 30 years ago - theyre nothing now.

Newcastle has ridden on the resources boom for the last 15 or 20 years. Coal exports from the port of Newcastle have risen from around 50 million tonnes a year to around 150 million tonnes a year, while the price went from something like $60 a tonne up to over $200 a tonne.

Towns like Muswellbrook have gone from poor little farming villages to being in the top 10 postcodes in the country for average earnings, as coal miners pull in wages over a quarter of a million. A few Knights players have actually quit football to become coal miners because they can earn more.

Lake Macquarie (the area to the South of Newcastle - and the birthplace of Knights players like Willie Mason, Josh Perry, Clint Newton, Paul Harrogan, Brett Kimmorley, Adam Muir and dozens of others) is one of the fastest growing areas in Australia, with the population rising from around 80k to over 200k in the past 40 years or so, and there are now several suburbs in both Lake Macquarie and Newcastle where average house prices are over the million dollar mark.

In short, the city and the district is booming.

Whether it keeps on booming now that the resources boom is running out of steam is another question, but right now the streets are paved in black gold.