A BMW hits Knights fans in Newcastle before the NRL grand final

A car hit Newcastle Knights fans during a procession on Saturday, hours before the NRL grand final. Ten people were injured, some critically. Police arrested the driver at the scene. The incident is being treated as unintentional. Nine News described it as a hooning incident. The Sydney Morning Herald's account, from one of the injured, is of a BMW that came through the crowd too fast to step aside.

Chris Clancy, 48, an assistant manager at Kennards Hire in Heatherbrae and a foundation Knights supporter, spoke from John Hunter Hospital. He has a broken left collarbone, a fracture in his right foot, broken ribs and small spinal fractures. He was due in surgery on Saturday night or Sunday. He asked doctors to finish before the grand final kick-off at 7.30 pm on Sunday. He said the front of the BMW hit him, and that his foot was hurt again when the driver tried to move the car. He stayed conscious. About half a dozen people lifted him onto a seat. A woman named Leanne stayed with him and his nephews.

One nephew, Tom, 25, had a graze to his left elbow, was discharged, and still planned to be at the final. A police car was already parked nearby to block traffic. Officers moved quickly. Ambulance and fire crews were there within minutes, Clancy said.

The procession was the club's send-off before the grand final. Fans on the street are the point of that event. A car in the same space is the risk. Police have not published the driver's name or a speed in the reports available on Saturday. They have said the driving is not being treated as deliberate. That finding can change if witness video or the car's own data says otherwise. For now the charge, if any, sits under traffic law rather than an attack on the crowd.

Clancy's injury list is the most precise public account of the harm. A broken collarbone, foot, ribs and spinal fractures are consistent with being struck and then caught as a car moves again. His request about the kick-off is a detail of timing, not of medicine. The final is on Sunday evening. Surgery that finishes before 7.30 pm lets him watch. It does not put him in the ground. His nephew's discharged elbow injury shows the range inside the ten: some people went home, at least one is critical, and Clancy is in between, waiting on an operating list.

Newcastle's grand final week is one of the few times the city puts a club procession on ordinary streets. The Knights have been building toward Sunday for a fortnight. A crash on the Saturday procession does not move the fixture. It changes the weekend for the families who were standing where the BMW went. The NRL has not, in the copy filed so far, announced a change to the 7.30 pm start.

What is still missing is the driver's account and a full hospital list. Ten injured is the Nine News figure. Clancy and Tom are two of them. The others have not been named. Until police say what speed the car was doing, and whether it was a loss of control or a deliberate burn-out that went wrong, the word hooning remains a description from the first reports, not a finding. The arrest at the scene is the part that is settled. The man was stopped there. The fans were already on the ground.