Whether it’s a highly-touted rookie coach or premiership-winning mentor, unsettled NRL clubs are destined for nothing but failure.

That’s the belief of Newcastle caretaker Kristian Woolf after watching his side end their sorry season with a meek 54-10 surrender to Penrith on Sunday.

The 46-point thrashing was easily their worst effort of the year.

It was a dismal end to a disappointing campaign that promised so much after they had surged to fourth spot at the halfway point.

However the Knights fell apart after the State of Origin period to lose six of seven games, resulting in the controversial resignation of coach Nathan Brown.

Asked whether a new coach would solve their issues, Woolf said: “When you’ve got disruption in a footy club, then if affects performance.

“There’s no doubt about that.

“We’ve obviously been very affected by a lot of things over the last couple of weeks. When footy clubs are unsettled, you don’t perform.

“That’s been proven plenty of times over a number of years.

“But that still doesn’t give us any reason for what we tossed out (on Sunday). We just weren’t committed for a game of footy unfortunately.”

Woolf, widely tipped to take over from Gold Coast-bound Justin Holbrook at St Helens next year, said the early signs were ominous against the Panthers.

“Your defence is where you show your commitment to each other,” he said.

“And it was pretty obvious early, even though we were in the contest, that (Penrith) were hitting a little bit harder and getting off their line harder than we were.

“And the team that does that tends to win the game. Once things became tough, we weren’t real committed. It’s a pretty disappointing performance.”

Star fullback Kalyn Ponga was barely a factor, carrying the ball for a season-low 52 metres from eight carries and missing half of his eight tackles.

The prodigious talent wasn’t alone, however, with the Knights doubling the Panthers’ 17 missed tackles in total.

Woolf identified rookie flyers Bradman Best and debutant Starford To’a, who scored an impressive 70-metre intercept try, as few positives.

“Starford came in and certainly showed that he’s got the capabilities to be a first-grader,” Woolf said.

“He’s athletically good enough, competed nice and hard, he scored that try because he wanted to compete hard. He had a couple of really good touches.

“Bradman’s been one of our best players the last three weeks. He certainly not there for a token selection.”