news, local-news, Toohey's News, Barry Toohey, Zac Lomax, Alex McKinnon, Mark Hughes, Bradman Best, Trent Taylor

Alex McKinnon has watched more schoolboy footy than most over the past three or four years in his role as talent spotter for the Newcastle Knights. So when the Knights new senior recruitment boss told this column in early 2018 that a teenage St George Illawarra centre about to make his NRL debut was "the best schoolboy footballer I've ever seen", you sit up and take notice. The player in question, Zac Lomax, has now just turned 20 but has already played 18 NRL games for the Dragons and is rated one of the boom young centres in the competition. So it comes as no surprise to us he is back on McKinnon's radar. Off contract at the end of next season, Lomax has told the Dragons he wants to test his worth on the open market. The Knights have jumped straight in and are now among a number of rival clubs chasing the Temora junior for 2021. The ball is already rolling. Lomax and his manager Steve Gillis were in Newcastle on Wednesday to meet with McKinnon and Knights coach Adam O'Brien. Gillis refused to confirm or deny the meeting but Lomax was spotted at Knights headquarters. It is no secret the Knights have made the signing of a strike centre a high priority. Lomax has an added string to his bow - he's also a fine goal-kicker. But rest assured there will be plenty of competition for his signature. He's no Latrell Mitchell but the Knights have signed a young centre from the Sydney Roosters who has been likened to the controversial Kangaroos star with the potential to become a top-liner. Lathan Hutchinson-Walters 19, doesn't have Mitchell's height and has a stockier build but judging by his on-line highlights package [google his name and see for yourself], he is just as hard to tackle in full flight. It's rare for the Roosters to let a talented kid go but Hutchinson-Walters lives on the Central Coast and the trip up to Newcastle for training apparently had far more appeal than travelling in the other direction. The talented teenager will play in the Knights' Jersey Flegg side next season. Powerfully-built young centre Bradman Best was a revelation and one of the few positives to emerge at the back-end of last season after making his top grade debut as the wheels completely fell off the club's finals bid. From all reports, Best has carried on where he left off and could not have been more impressive during the Knights opening week of training. So much so, the coaching and high performance staff voted him the club's best trainer for week one after taking into consideration a wide range of criteria. One of Australian sports most respected fitness and high performance training figures has been an interested spectator at Knights training over the past week. Dean Benton, currently the National Head of Athletic Performance at Rugby Australia, has been in Newcastle at the invitation of Knights coach Adam O'Brien to offer advice on the way the club is training in the pre-season. Benton transformed the way Melbourne Storm trained a few years ago and has worked both nationally and internationally in different codes and sports. Who was the fittest player in the Newcastle Knights' ranks when pre-season training kicked off last week with the traditional 1.2 km time trial? If you said Connor Watson, you would only be partially right. Watson ran the quickest time among the club's fulltime training squad, edging out last year's winner Mitchell Pearce and trialist Chris Randall. But he wasn't the quickest overall in the club. Every player in every grade including the juniors ran a 1.2 km time trial and we're reliably told the fastest time overall in the club was recorded by new Knights Under 20's playmaker Trent Taylor. Taylor is from Tamworth and has linked with the Knights after starring for Farrar High last season. His father Luke is an NRL development officer in Tamworth. Mark Hughes spent a week walking up Mount Kilimanjaro "picking the brain" of Sydney Roosters premiership-winning coach Trent Robinson last month. Which is timely given he will take the coaching reins today of the Newcastle team that includes the likes of Danny Buderus, Kurt Gidley, Billy Peden and Robbie O'Davis in the big Legends of League tournament at McDonald Jones Stadium. Defending title-holders Canterbury will feature again alongside the Eels, Brisbane, Penrith and the Barbarians with the concept coming to Newcastle for the first time after being played over the past two years in Gosford. The action will kick off at 1 pm with the Barbarians taking on Brisbane. Newcastle's first game is against Penrith at 2.30pm. "Robbo's put a bit of polish on me as a coach," Hughes told us this week. "So as long as the boys follow my game plans to the letter and my assistant coach doesn't get in the road, we should be okay." Hughes' assistant is none other than the Eighth Immortal Andrew Johns. "My biggest challenge will be keeping him off the field," Hughes said. The Mark Hughes foundation will be a beneficiary of the day along with the Rural Fire Service. It will be a big day for Hughes. He is a part-owner with a host of others of the Kris Lees-trained galloper Tactical Advantage, which is running in the $1 million Hunter at Broadmeadow at 4.20 pm. Tactical Advantage won at Flemington on Melbourne Cup day but Hughes had to settle for watching it on television from Dubai. No matter what, he will be making sure he is trackside today. New Knight Jayden Brailey will go down as the last in a long line of Newcastle recruits under former coach Nathan Brown to be ultimately wooed by the culinary skills of Brown's wife Tanya. Mrs Brown's now famous butter chicken recipe was the go-to meal whenever the coach brought a potential new recruit home for dinner during the negotiation process. It all started with the Ponga family back in November 2016. Brailey confirmed it was on the menu when he came up to Newcastle to meet with Brown. "Yep, I had the butter chicken," he told this column. "It was good too. I signed on the spot."

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