DANE ELDRIDGE: Why the Sydney Roosters should be running scared ahead of Newcastle Knights grand final

Australia’s love affair with chicken runs so deep that Woolies could put faces on the barbecue chooks and we’d just shrug at the dinner table and put a bag over its head.

But despite our unconditional love of poultry, there’s one particular breed of Chook that will sour Aussie appetites this week like a schnitty full of avian flu.

With the Newcastle Knights capturing the nation’s imagination for Sunday’s NRL grand final, Australia is once again unifying in hate against the Sydney Roosters, even more so than usual.

Make no mistake, the overwhelming support for Newcastle means this decider will not just be Australia vs the Chooks, it’ll be the World.

And with the Knights boasting serious momentum and nothing to lose, you could argue the Eastern Suburbs powerhouse is, brace yourself, the underdog.

Sure, it’s pretty repugnant to label one of the game’s most prolific entities as a plucky bookies outsider when they’re up against a wooden spooner in a 25 year premiership drought that’s scrapped from 7th place.

But considering Accor Stadium will be a virtual Knights home game on Sunday, Trent Robinson’s side has more to worry about than just a confident opposition and Kalyn Ponga smashing his front-rowers.

The emotion shown by Ponga and the Johns Brothers at full-time of Newcastle’s stirring preliminary final win over Penrith were not just tears, they were the first drops of an impending tsunami.

With Knights merchandise since selling out as quickly as the game itself, the bandwagon is already at such velocity that Chris Minns has cut his losses and cancelled rail trackwork just to get the hell out of its way.

By Sunday, this wave of support will reach a crescendo reminiscent of 2009 when the Parramatta Eels transformed the world in to a pop-up Blue and Gold Army by surging from eighth place to take on a Melbourne Storm side already widely repulsed even though they were still six months from getting busted cheating the salary cap.

But why is there such a disparity in supportership between the two clubs for Sunday?

Put simply, Newcastle is affable, earthy and adorably flawed, and heaps of other things the Bondi side is not.

And while the Roosters can also lay claims to being the People’s Team, it’s only for people who’ve been to Davos.

While the Knights have faced their fair share of financial woes, the Roosters are bankrolled by an owner in Nick Politis who’s wealthy enough to consider his BHP shares loose change.

The Tri-Colours also suffer no roadblocks attracting talent, unlike the Knights who were forced to offer $13m just to get Dylan Brown to answer their emails.

Furthermore, the Knights get the popular vote not only for surging from 7th place in style - scoring so many tries from inside their own half the opposition would be better off turning the ball over on their 20m line - but for also climbing off the floor from a wooden spoon last year.

In fact, with its last grand final appearance coming in 2001, the Hunter club has nothing to show for the last 25 years except one preliminary final appearance, five wooden spoons and countless coaching payouts.

On the other hand, the Roosters are in a first-world premiership ‘drought’ currently spanning seven grueling seasons.

Even the Eastern Suburbs club’s grand final fairytale fails to compare to the Knights.

Sure, sending off Daly Cherry-Evans with a premiership ring in his 379th and final game would be pretty special, but not if it’s over an opposition whose last silverware predates the iPhone.

But most of all, it’s the Knights fanbase that endears the neutral to its plight.

A congregation of groupies more devout than Scientologists, the Newcastle faithful continue to flock to watch the Knights every week even when they’ve been so turgid you’d close the curtains if they were playing in your backyard.

Make no mistake, this week will be so Knights-saturated the Roosters should take the field on Sunday in Washington Generals kit.

And if that makes them outsiders, there’s nothing more unpopular than that.