"Last year they were around the top four towards the end of the year … they've got some injuries to key players, but you look at the Roosters' key players, especially last week," he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
"No Tedesco, Jake Friend, Boyd Cordner, Luke Keary, [Sam] Verrills – key players, but they still got it done at home and beat Newcastle by 30."<\/p>\n
Johns said that the number one priority for the Knights since their introduction to the competition in 1988 was to make sure they never embarrassed themselves at home. <\/p>\n
"What I saw on the weekend was just horrible to watch. I don't know what the problem is, it wouldn't be physical because pretty much all the teams train the same. If it's a mental thing, I don't know how they get themselves out of it."<\/p>\n
"Something is broken within the system. The junior players are not coming into first grade ready for first grade footy," he said.<\/p>\n
The eighth immortal praised Kurt Mann's performances for the Knights, but added that he doesn't believe the former Storm and Dragons player is a natural five-eighth.<\/p>\n
![\"Sterlo](\"https:\/\/vms-network-images-prod.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com\/2021\/05\/356643\/pickerImage.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
"They need an out-and-out number six. Mitchell's there for another year, but they need to find a halfback. But more, they've got to look within at how they're coaching the juniors."<\/p>\n
The model to copy is that at the foot of the mountains, he said.<\/p>\n
"Look at Penrith, Gus came in and said it was a five-year plan. They rearranged the junior coaching, how they recruited, who they recruited, how they coached them.<\/p>\n
"You look now, the way they're doing, it's all these players who've come through together."<\/p>\n
![\"NRL](\"https:\/\/vms-network-images-prod.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com\/2021\/05\/356199\/pickerImage.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
He also highlighted Daine Laurie, Caleb Aekins and Matt Burton as great players who had been forced to leave to find a permanent first grade spot, such was the talent overflowing at Penrith.<\/p>\n
"Not only are they producing all these players within, there's other clubs getting players from all the great work that Gus and other great coaches have done."<\/p>\n
"There's the model for other clubs." <\/p>\n
For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/em><\/strong> clicking here!<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" League great Andrew Johns has urged his former club Newcastle to emulate the Penrith Panthers when it comes to junior development. Speaking on Nine's Immortal […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68688,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68686\/revisions\/68688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}