Knights need to clean up act, says Smith
BY ROBERT DILLON
BRIAN Smith admits the Newcastle Knights need to "take a good look" at their on-field discipline before next season after adverse penalty counts cruelled their hopes of reaching this year's NRL play-offs.
Newcastle finished ninth after the regular-season rounds and an extra win would have enabled them to scrape into the finals, which start this weekend.
Smith and his players were left ruing five losses by six points or less, and there is little doubt that Newcastle's cause was undermined by unresolved issues with the NRL's referees.
In 24 games, the Knights won the penalty count only four times.
They conceded more penalties (181) than any other team and were equal last with Penrith in terms of penalties awarded in their favour (134).
That left the Knights with a penalty differential of minus-47, which was easily the worst in the NRL.
The Roosters (minus-33) were their nearest rivals, while Parramatta (plus-47) finished the season with the best positive penalty ratio.
In other words, the Eels were 94 penalties better off than Newcastle an average of almost four per game.
Smith said yesterday he had not yet started his post-season review but was satisfied that Newcastle had made all-round improvement in many areas this year.
He nonetheless acknowledged that the Knights would need to work harder at staying onside with the match officials if they hoped to make further progress in 2009.
"I need to go into further analysis, but there are definitely a few individual guys who have deadset got little traits that make them prone to penalties," Smith said.
"So we'll work on them.
"But as a club, I don't think we'll be going down the path of pursuing the referees to get them to educate us.
"We just need to have a good look at ourselves and tidy up those individuals that are incurring multiple penalties and see it we can fix it from our own end."
Knights back-rower Chris Houston was the fourth-most penalised player in the NRL this season, conceding 21 in 24 games.
Kurt Gidley and Jarrod Mullen were Newcastle's next worst offenders, with 13 apiece.
Asked whether he considered Newcastle an undisciplined team, Smith replied: "I think there are aspects of it [discipline] we need to tidy up, not just in penalties but in terms of taking opportunities.
"When we get opportunities to make breaks, score tries and wrap games up, that in itself is a discipline.
"The tight games is when it hurts you.
"Penalties did play a role in those losses, but I also think we need to develop a little bit of a tougher mental attitude.
"That's not being too harsh on our younger players. I think it's fair to assume that's something we'll get better at.
"We need to have a bit more of a hard-nosed attitude to ensure that we don't lose games when we've been the better team."
Smith was unsure if there was any merit in trying to form a closer working relationship with the NRL referees.
He said he knew of one club who held interactive pre-season sessions with the whistle-blowers but it did them little good once the season kicked off.
"It could be misconstrued as a butt-kissing exercise," Smith said.
Heavy penalty counts were a constant source of angst for the Knights in 2008, and the club was fined $5000 in July when chief executive Steve Burraston claimed referees had a "pre-conceived" idea that Newcastle were undisciplined.
Smith said that, ironically, his team started to fare better with the referees after the coaching staff conceded that complaining to referees coach Robert Finch was basically a lost cause.
"We got to a point in the season where we felt like there was absolutely no return of the amount of time we were putting in, as coaches, in terms of interacting [with the NRL referees officials]," he said.
"From the point we just abandoned it, we actually got better.
"So our performance improved when we stopped worrying about it."
Several times this season Smith said the most frustrating aspect of Newcastle's penalty purgatory was that they seemingly could not "buy" one in their favour.
He has since studied video of certain clubs and believes they are being coached in techniques to "milk" penalties when they have the ball.
"I think there is a bit of a pattern arising there, some trends in the game about what the guys in possession of the ball are doing," he said.
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