'We got a lesson': Knights lose grit in hunt for highlights

Newcastle coach Adam O’Brien lamented his team’s lack of patience and poise in their 28-12 loss to Canberra at McDonald Jones Stadium on Thursday night.

After their whirlwind finish to last season, when they built a 10-game winning streak that culminated in a 30-28 extra-time victory over the Raiders in the first round of the finals, the Knights were out-muscled in the middle and looked out of sorts at the end of their sets.

“Our game lacked any sort of grit,” O’Brien said.

“We were impatient, it felt like we wanted the highlight reel, where the other mob, when you score four tries or whatever on the last play, and they were scrappy tries, but that’s what they wanted.

“They wanted to come here and get into a scrap, and I don’t reckon we did, and we got a lesson in what wins the first month of footy.

“That’s high completions and working hard all the way through to the back end of the set and not looking for the easy way out. So it’s pretty easy to dissect it, I reckon.”

Completing at 90 per cent to Newcastle’s 66, and making only six errors against Newcastle’s 15, the Raiders played the way the Knights expected them to.

Knights captain Kalyn Ponga was well contained and made some uncharacteristic handling errors that stymied several attacking opportunities.

“We weren’t patient. We know what sort of team Canberra are, and that’s how we had to play tonight and we didn’t do that,” Ponga said.

“I think ‘Coach’ summarised it pretty well. That’s how it felt, to be honest. We made too many errors in that first half.

“I felt like when we were controlling the footy, we were in control of the game, but yeah.

“I thought we started the second half well again too. When we held the footy, completed sets, I felt like we were in control of the game, then little things change momentum.

“They were scrappy, they were gritty, and we weren’t.”

O’Brien believed the Knights lost their way after a Tyson Gamble try was disallowed in the 24th minute because Tyson Frizell obstructed Canberra hooker Danny Levi in the lead-up. Levi ran into Frizell trying to reel in a run-away Ponga in the middle of the field.

Though the Raiders received the penalty, which ultimately led to a Zac Hosking try, they also lost Hudson Young to the sin-bin for 10 minutes because of Young’s late contact on Ponga but the Knights could not capitalise on their extra-man advantage.

Frizell scored from a Gamble pass just before Young returned, cutting the deficit to 8-6, but the Knights were out of rhythm for most of the second half and could not build or sustain pressure.

Tries to Levi, Xavier Savage and Jordan Rapana in a 20-minute stretch allowed the visitors to skip away to an unassailable 22-6 lead with 10 minutes remaining.

Both teams had several tries disallowed but O’Brien offered no excuses, suggesting the Raiders stewed all summer on their finals defeat at the same venue last September while the Knights might have allowed themselves to read too much into his pre-season back-slaps.

“The disallowed tries had nothing to do with our problems at the moment,” O’Brien said.

“There’s some stuff that we need to take ownership of, so I’m not going to sit here and whinge about that.

“The other mob were good. They’ve spent their summer dreaming about coming back here, and we’ve been happy with our summer – and I’ve probably told them too many times how good a summer we’ve had – so I don’t need to do that anymore.”

Knights winger Enari Tuala suffered a quadriceps strain just before half-time, putting him in doubt for the game against his former club North Queensland in Townsville on March 16.