Bradman Best will miss Sunday's Magic Round clash with a calf injury, but the Newcastle centre says the horror of last year's wooden-spoon escape still burns in him. Best said watching the Gold Coast win that helped foist the spoon on Newcastle “lit a fire in my belly,” as the Knights prepare to face the Titans again with no margin for another slip.
Newcastle entered the final round of the 2025 regular season needing to beat Parramatta or hope the Titans lost to avoid finishing last, before the Eels ran out 66-10 winners in Adam O'Brien's final game as Knights coach. It meant the club's only weekend in last place all year came in the one that counted most, and Best did not hide how close that was to becoming a defining stain on the season.
“It was disappointing,” Best said. “It was the easy option, thinking like that (relying on the Titans to lose). Then when they won and then we had to play and we lost, it was hard.” He said the lesson has stayed with him because finishing last carries more than a number beside a team name. “It's tough when you get the wooden spoon, not only for yourself but your family. You bring everyone into it. There's a bit of an effect with that. You definitely want to change that,” he said.
The Titans' role in that squeeze was not an accident of one round. They had spent 12 of the previous 14 rounds at the bottom of the ladder before the end of the 2025 regular season, and only climbed out after upsetting Wests Tigers on the penultimate day. Newcastle, meanwhile, had been in a far better position for much of the year. Under Justin Holbrook, the Knights won six of their first 10 games, a sharp turnaround that came despite injuries to Fletcher Sharpe, Kalyn Ponga, Dylan Brown, Tyson Frizell and Dylan Lucas across the first 10 weeks of the season.
That contrast is why Sunday's titans vs knights meeting carries so much weight for Newcastle, even with Best sidelined. The club has already pledged there will be no repeat of the wooden-spoon scenario in 2026, and the memory of a season that briefly threatened to unravel at the end has become part warning, part fuel. Best put it plainly: “We just don't want to be in that position ever again.”
For Newcastle, the matchup is about more than a Magic Round result. It is a chance to show that the panic of last year was a low point, not a habit. For the Titans, it is another reminder that a single upset can change the whole picture at the bottom of the ladder. And for Best, watching from the sideline, it is another test of whether the fire he felt after last season still can be turned into something that lasts beyond one bruising spring.
