When Knights winger Dominic Young swaps the beaches of Newcastle for Bondi next season, he hopes to be sporting an NRL premiership ring.
Young has been instrumental for the Knights during their incredible streak of 10 straight wins as he looks to leave on a high ahead of his move to the Sydney Roosters next season.
The Knights’ fairytale season continued on Sunday with an exciting 30-28 extra time win over Canberra in their elimination final, with Young scoring two tries as he continued his remarkable season.
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The Englishman, who is the leading try-scorer this season in the NRL, extended his Knights record for tries in a season to 25, helping Newcastle progress to a semi-final showdown against the Warriors in New Zealand on Saturday.
Young, who joined Newcastle from the Huddersfield Giants at the start of the 2021 NRL season, puts his try-scoring success down to his teammates and the vocal home crowd at McDonald Jones Stadium during the game against the Raiders.
“Probably lucky this year I’ve been able to cross over for a few,” the ever-so-humble Young told 7NEWS rugby league reporter Michelle Bishop.
“It’s just all credit to the boys inside me, they’re putting me into space and you know I’ve got the easy job.
“As soon as I got the ball, the roar of the crowd got me home, to be honest. I was feeling cooked out there, my legs were feeling a bit heavy.”
The 22-year-old said he hopes to bring success to the rugby league-mad town of Newcastle, where the Knights celebrated their last NRL premiership way back in 2001.
“There’s a massive buzz around the town at the minute,” Young said.
“I’ve just been walking around and everyone’s so happy and invested in the team.
“It feels really good that we can repay the town.”
Young is a big, strong and powerful winger and admits he “definitely can’t hide (around Newcastle), I don’t think there’s too many people walking around my height with the dreads”.
The star winger said he wants to depart Newcastle with grand-final glory before he moves onto the Roosters next season.
“It’s hard not to, to look, to think like that,” Young said about winning an NRL premiership with the Knights.
“Obviously, we all got massive goals and that is the end goal, but we’ve definitely got to stay in the now and look week to week.”
The Knights face a Warriors team coming off the back of a qualifying-final thrashing at the hands of the Panthers, with Young prepared for a tough game in New Zealand.
“It probably wasn’t their best performance,” Young said about the Warriors’ loss to Penrith.
“That means they’re going to come out even harder against us at home.
“If we play our style of footy, we know that it works.”
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