Egregious snub should prompt change to Dally M voting process

Newcastle is playing in an NRL grand final this weekend, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the award winners from Wednesday night’s Dally M event.

Of the 45 – yes, 45 – players and coaches recognised with various awards at the game’s night of nights, only one went to a Knights representative.

That was Mercedez Taulelei-Siala, who took out the NRLW rookie of the year gong.

Of the NRL awards, not a single Knights player could crack the Team of the Year, while Justin Holbrook was an egregious snub for Coach of the Year honours.

While no one could rightly argue Kalyn Ponga should have knocked Dylan Edwards out of the fullback spot – given Edwards finished top-three in the Dally M count, he was an automatic selection at fullback – a couple of Ponga’s teammates can consider themselves unlucky.

Newcastle wingers Greg Marzhew and Dom Young have been two of the team’s best performers all season, and are a big reason for the Hunter team’s success.

But the Team of the Year wingers ended up being Penrith’s Tom Jenkins – even though South Sydney’s Alex Johnston had a better tries-per-game rate than him – and Selwyn Cobbo of the Dolphins.

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Jenkins had a fantastic year and Penrith finished top of the ladder, so he deserved his spot. But while Cobbo was good, Marzhew and Young were better in pretty much every relative metric, including tries scored across the season. Cobbo was in fact 11th for tries scored this season.

The only possible reason for Cobbo beating out the two Newcastle flyers – and Johnston from the Bunnies – might be the fact his Dolphins finished third on the ladder, while the Knights finished seventh and Rabbitohs finished sixth.

But of all the award winners on Wednesday night, none drew a more stunned reaction than Andrew Webster being named NRL’s Coach of the Year.

The Warriors had a good season and narrowly missed out on a minor premiership. They finished sixth last year, and improved to second in 2026 with four more wins, and battled some injury dramas along the way.

But a glance at the comments sections of social media following his win on Wednesday shows an almost unanimous response – Holbrook was royally robbed.

In his first year as Knights coach he took them from being the worst team in the competition, to a genuine finals force and now into their first grand final in 25 years.

They won six games last year and were the worst attacking team in the NRL by a long, long way under Adam O’Brien. They won 14 games in the regular season this year, and scored about 300 more points doing so.

And like the Warriors, Newcastle battled serious injury dramas, including losing $13m signing Dylan Brown and then State of Origin forward Dylan Lucas, and still qualified for finals.

The NRL’s Coach of the Year voting rules bizarrely exclude finals from being considered. Webster’s Warriors went out in straight sets, while the Knights have stunned the competition with three upset victories to reach the premiership decider.

Players this week have done nothing but credit Holbrook for the turnaround that has shocked the NRL.

Even Webster looked awkward when he walked onto the stage on Wednesday night, having earlier told the broadcast “I’m sure I won’t” win the award.

“I want to congratulate Justin for the year he has had,” Webster said.

“And Trent (Robinson) getting to the grand final. It’s something everyone’s chasing. They’ve done a terrific job.”

It is the second Coach of the Year gong Webster has won. In 2023, he claimed the award for lifting the Warriors from 15th on the ladder to a top-four spot.

But they have never played in a grand final under his watch.

Penrith’s Ivan Cleary has won the award only once amid the dominant Panthers era. He won it in 2020 – when they were beaten by Melbourne in the grand final – and has not won it since despite four consecutive premierships.

So in the last six years, Webster has won it twice and Cleary once.

Last year Michael Maguire missed out on the award despite lifting the Broncos from 12th to fourth, and then a grand final and premiership.

It might be time to change the criteria and voting process.