Newcastle Knights coach Adam O’Brien poured cold water on suggestions that Cameron Ciraldo was coming for his job, saying that the Penrith assistant had called him personally to tell him it was nonsense.
“I didn’t know about this, but Cameron, being the bloke that he is, was the first one to call and [we] had a laugh,” O’Brien told reporters on Wednesday.
The 37-year-old spent four of his nine seasons in the NRL at Newcastle, making 43 appearances for the club before finishing up at Penrith and moving into their coaching staff immediately after retirement.
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O’Brien revealed that he had previously tried to get the highly regarded Panthers assistant into the fold in his back room.
“He does love the place, I almost had him coming as an assistant a few years ago, he was all in, but no truth from his end,” he said.
“He’s a good man, Ciro, [I’ve] got a good relationship with him and we speak often – he was the first one to call me this morning.”
While it’s a stretch to consider O’Brien’s status at the club as ’embattled’, he did concede that a turnaround in fortunes would be needed pretty soon.
“At the end of the day, our ladder position will warrant some people having opinions on that,” he said.
“Whether they’re factual or not, I don’t really care to be honest. I just care about preparing the team today to get a result on the weekend.”
It will be Ciraldo’s Panthers who travel to Newcastle on Sunday afternoon, which O’Brien conceded would be a “huge challenge” – with or without Penrith’s cohort of Origin players.
“Watching them last week without their topliners, they stay the same,” he said.
“It really is next man up. They don’t change.”
O’Brien did go as far as to say that Newcastle, who have won just two of their last ten games, were “feeling the pressure” – but made a bold claim for the second half of the season.
“There’s been parts of our game that have been really, really strong and there’s been parts that have been really disappointing,” he said.
“If we can concentrate on hanging on to the parts that have been strong and focus on fixing a few areas, I’m confident, with some personnel and some experience coming back, finals are still within our reach.”
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