Where do Newcastle go next?

TWELVE months ago (almost to the day) I wrote a piece about what was wrong with the Newcastle Knights.

12 months later and frighteningly nothing has changed. In fact, if it's possible for a club to go backwards after winning a wooden spoon the year before, the Knights are giving it a red-hot crack.

But the problem with this situation is that it's one most of the players have absolutely no control over.

It's an end product of years of mismanagement and creating a culture of "jobs for the boys".

Throw in a salary cap process that doesn't really work if you have creative accountants and third-party agreements and you have a solution where Newcastle currently finds themselves.

While no one knows exactly what amount of money some of the more high-profile players are on if you ask yourself whether they would get that same cash at another club the answer is probably no.

So what's left is overpaid players sprinkled with an abundance of youth such as we saw on Sunday when the Knights were belted 62-0.

One thing that should be noted about that is that seven of the squad were under 20 years of age. That means half the first grade side could have played earlier in the day in the Holden Cup.

The most concerning aspect about the whole situation is that young kids aren't aspiring to play for the Knights when they grow up.

I remember when I was two years old I would be thrown over the turnstiles at half-time because I just loved the team and what they stood for. Would a two-year-old in 2016 want to do that?

So where does all the blame lie? Is it at the feet of the management, is it at the culture which was created 20 years ago where everyone simply had to give the ball to Andrew Johns? Is it with Brian Smith after his clean-out in 2007?

Is it with Wayne Bennett for not blooding more young players in his three-year tenure at the club where he instead signed 30-year-olds in the hope of buying a premiership? Is it with Nathan Tinkler after he splashed the cash and sounded all the bells and whistles when he arrived before he then signed Darius Boyd and Kade Snowden?

This is far more than just the fact the Knights were beaten 62-0 on Sunday.

Without sounding too pessimistic there isn't a lot to be excited about if you're part of the red-and-blue faithful. Times are tough.

It was mentioned on social media that the unfettered and unregulated use of third party agreements have created a competition that is fundamentally unfair; a competition in which the wealthy compete and the rest make up the numbers.

Clubs without access to third party money have no chance of success and no control over their destiny. How long can their fans be expected to hang on? What is the strategic direction, moving forward? Where does the future lie for the 'have nots'?

Nathan Brown is not to blame for this situation. He's just doing the best he can with the cards he's been dealt.

The NRL needs to have a long, hard look at this and fix it before clubs like Newcastle can't be fixed.

Players such as Brock Lamb, Jack Cogger, Danny Levi and Jacob and Daniel Saifiti could have been very handy first graders in another era. In this one they could very well be victims of an uneven playing field.