‘I had a point to prove’: Kalyn Ponga returns to Dally M form as he prepares to head home for finals showdown

No one needs convincing on just how good Kalyn Ponga is at rugby league, but even the Knights skipper felt like he had a point to prove this season despite winning the Dally M Medal last year thanks to 10 weeks of perfection.

What Ponga did last year was quite remarkable given he’d travelled overseas to meet up with brain specialists after his latest concussion that had some people fearing his career was over.

The superstar fullback then carried Newcastle on his back to take them to the second week of the finals, with history repeating 12 months later after he suffered a serious Lisfranc injury in round 7 but has found his best form after missing nearly three months.

“Coming back from my injury, I sort of felt like I had a point to prove,” he said.

“Just proving that the best version of myself is the best (is what I wanted to prove).

“When you’re injured, you’re not really the best version of yourself. You’re coming back from rehab, you’re doing all that. Once I’m on the field, I want to be the best version of myself, so just making sure I do everything day-to-day to do that.

“In terms of the team and the structures and the coaching, it’s doubling down on what we think we’re doing right, focusing on the good instead of the bad. That’s probably the reason why we’re in this position and heading into semi-final footy.”

The Knights snuck into eighth spot with Ponga setting up both their tries to help them beat the Dolphins in a virtual wildcard game to end the season, and they’ve already been written off ahead of their trip to Townsville.

But with four wins from their past five games, they’ve struck form at just the right time and are confident going into their elimination final even if most people are tipping them to lose.

“I think we feed off more what we’re doing internally,” Ponga said.

“There are obviously different motives for different players and whatnot and the club, but I think the biggest thing for us is that confidence from what we’ve been doing.

“I think we’ve got a good understanding of what our footy looks like. I think we’re tough, I think the boys have displayed that all year. We’re going to need to take that up north. I think that’s where we get our confidence from.

“I’d like not to be injured, I think I’ve been injured the last half of each season so then I’m kind of timely at the back end. But as a playing group, I think for us we’ve had evidence that things have been working, we probably just haven’t had the results.

“We’ve seemed to put it together at the right time over the last three, four, five weeks (of the season). It’s not a coincidence, I think we’ve just stuck at what we thought was happening, what we were doing right and it’s sort of just coming along.”

For Ponga, Saturday’s game will be a homecoming of sorts as he returns to the city where he carved up in the Holden Cup and then made his NRL debut almost eight years ago to the day when he was thrust onto the wing for the Cowboys in their dramatic finals win over Brisbane.

“It all happened very quickly – I was a young 18-year-old with no idea what was really going on, how big the occasion and everything was,” he said.

“Being naive and young was probably in a way a favour, not really understanding the work that had been done to get into that position. For me, I just went out there with no expectations, just play and work hard.

“I was lucky to have some good leaders at the time, obviously JT (Johnathan Thurston), Michael Morgan, Matt Scott, Gavin Cooper, Lachie Coote. All these players are legends of the game.

“It was an awesome experience. It was probably one of my favourite experiences.”