As Newcastle fight to keep its season alive, Kalyn Ponga is going back to where it all started.

The Queensland Origin star has become one of rugby league's best players at the Knights but he first made his name in the big time as a North Queenslander, meaning he'll come full circle when the Novocastrians travel to Townsville on Saturday night.

Ponga has played against his former club plenty of times before, but given this is a sudden-death semifinal, the stakes have never been so high.

Ponga was already something of a sensation when he signed with the Cowboys in 2013 as a 15-year old, multi-sport phenom who excelled at league, union, touch football, golf and Aussie Rules.

What began as curiosity quickly bloomed into serious attention once a dazzling highlight reel of his schoolboy rugby heroics swept across the internet.

Like the old Shaun Johnson touch footy highlights, the vision is still compelling. Young fellas who move like that seem to have no limits beyond what we can imagine, and after watching Ponga it was easy to imagine quite a bit.

It meant his debut in the old Under 20s competition in 2015 was as hyped as some players maiden NRL matches, and in a twist of fate it was current Cowboys NRL coach Todd Payten who handed him his first start late in the year.

Ponga was coming into a red-hot side – his debut was a 78-12 massacre of Canberra and the Cowboys were well on their way to a top four berth, but even then, at just 17, he stood out.

In his third game, he ran for 285 metres with ball in hand. In his fourth, he scored a hat-trick. And his eight games that year were a tantalising glimpse of what was to come.

"It's kids like him that make coaching easier, when they're so talented, there's not too much coaching going on – sometimes you can over-coach them," said Aaron Payne, who coached Ponga at the Cowboys in 2016-17.

"He's one of those blokes who's pretty naturally gifted, so that at that age you just have to give them confidence, encourage them to do their thing.

"If there are things they need to work on, you can show them, but he was one who you enjoyed coaching because he had so many quality attributes."

Over the following two seasons, Ponga began to blossom. He made the team of the year in both seasons and the talk of a young player being destined for greatness only grew louder.

Only one Under 20s game a week was televised, so vision wasn't easy to find. It meant a player like Ponga could take on a larger than life quality.

Sometimes, stats would come out on the Monday that scarcely seemed believable, like the game against the Warriors in 2015 where Ponga ran for 327m, broke 20 tackles and accumulated five line breaks. 

If you can manage to dig out the old footage, it's all there – the speed, the footwork, the passing game, the ability to slide past defenders like they're not there at all.

Even as a boy, Ponga seemed as though he was made to do brilliant things, as if he was one of the special ones for whom true greatness is possible.

"Without being disrespectful to other players I've coached, and this was very early on in my coaching career, but he was one of the first players I'd come across who I considered to have all the attributes," said Payne.

"When I say that, I mean he's strong defensively, he's great in attack, he had a passing game, but he also had toughness – he'd put his body on the line, he wasn't afraid of contact.

"He had football smarts about him, he had the right attitude, he wanted to get better and he was coachable, so you knew he was going to be pretty special."

After a while, it was clear Ponga truly was destined for stardom and everyone knew it.

Even with teams that contained the likes of Viliame Kikau, Brandon Smith, Coen Hess, Corey Horsburgh, Reuben Cotter, Murray Taulagi and Jake Clifford, he was always the stand-out.

"My assistant coach Steve Sheppard, everyone calls him Pup and he's a real funny bloke, he was in charge of doing the head count when we were heading off to training or games.

"Someone would ask 'is everyone here', and Pup would say, 'KP, are you here?'"

"KP would yell out 'yup', and Pup would go, 'Righto, that's all we need, we're good to go.'"

The hype continued to roll on as Ponga made his NRL debut in a sudden-death semifinal against the Broncos in 2016, making a mazy, exhilarating line break with one of his first touches, and only continued as he signed a rich, four-year deal with the Knights later that year.

He appeared sporadically in the top grade the following year, his last in Townsville, as he waited for his NRL life to truly begin.

With such ravenous expectations it would be easy for Ponga to have either buckled under the pressure or become too wrapped up in his own abilities, but Payne has nothing but praise for how Ponga handled the scrutiny.

"I didn't really have to manage the hype – he was a good kid and he had his head on his shoulders," said Payne.

"I never saw him get ahead of himself, he was very grounded, so I never had to talk to him about that or keep him in check.

"He always had a great attitude, so I never had to address that."

Ponga's time at the Knights has not always been easy. A series of concussions threatened his career, and the media backlash which came at times he could not live up to the impossible expectations, was brutal and merciless.

But on the whole, he has gone on to fulfil those lofty expectations he was saddled with at the Cowboys.

He's won man of the match in Origin deciders, claimed the Dally M last year and helped Newcastle to an unexpected finals berth this year when its season looked lost as the team sat 14th on the ladder just six weeks ago.

The hype that's followed him since he was barely a teenager will never leave him, but Ponga showed long ago there is plenty of substance behind the style.

"Just from the outside looking in, I'm quite amazed with how he's dealt with pressure and expectation," Payne said.

"There's been so much of that on him, and that can be a tough thing to deal with, some blokes don't deal with it but he's dealt with it really well.

"From that, with his experience now, one of his roles in the side is leadership, and I think he's become a great leader."