A town, a team and a dream come together as Newcastle rises as one

All week the scribes have been falling over themselves to come up with the best way to describe what the Knights mean to Newcastle ahead of Sunday's grand final against the Roosters.

The love between the team and the town is easy to valorise and even easier to fetishise as you lose yourself in coalfield cliches and well-worn stories about 1997.

The truth is it's something that's easier to feel than it is to describe. In a league of franchises, they are a club in the truest sense of the word because they are a vessel for the community, for its hopes, dreams and fears, for its joy, sorrow and pride.

They are the prism through which Newcastle feels it's feelings and at their best they become avatars of every quality the Hunter likes about itself — that they are hard-working and loyal to their mates, that they're courageous and daring, that they can walk as tall as anyone and fear nothing.

The Knights make it easier to cry, to dream of better times, to roar with triumph if they arrive and despair if they don't, to tell someone you love them or show them just how much.

The Knights are a way of life. The Knights are home. The Knights will make you believe the words of the club song, that this game is their game as surely as this town is their town.

Copyright for this text belongs to ABC Australia.