Penrith or bust for Newcastle after tough night
BY BRETT KEEBLE
THE Knights face a winner-takes-all game against the Penrith Panthers at EnergyAustralia Stadium on Sunday after fumbling and fighting their way to a frustrating 30-14 loss to the Raiders at Canberra Stadium last night.
Eighth-placed Newcastle (28 points) would have secured their first finals berth in three years had they beaten the Raiders but have instead left the door open for the ninth-placed Panthers (27).
The top seven teams are safely in the eight and the last berth will go to the winner of the Knights-Panthers game in front of a likely capacity Newcastle crowd on Sunday.
"We won't dwell on this for the rest of the week. We've got some recovery to do and look ahead to next Sunday," captain Kurt Gidley said.
"It's always a big game, the last home game each year being Old Boys Day, but this one's got even more significance than usual now."
Knights coach Rick Stone reinforced the importance of the Penrith game when addressing his dejected players in the dressing-room immediately after last night's defeat.
"We're disappointed not in our effort tonight, but obviously our execution and the way we went about the game," Stone said.
"But we realise that in six days we've got to play again and we still control our own destiny."
Like Gidley, veteran former NSW and Australian game-breaker Adam MacDougall said looking ahead to the showdown with the Panthers was more pertinent than dwelling on the disappointment of last night.
"That's all we can do, really," MacDougall said.
"Our destiny's been in our own hands. It was there tonight for us to take, and we didn't, but thankfully we've got another opportunity on Sunday.
"We made a lot of errors and put a lot of pressure on ourselves, and full credit to them for capitalising on it . . . If we play like that next week, we're going to make it hard for ourselves again, so we need to find the form we found in the two games previously and hopefully we can do that."
In icy conditions and light but steady rain, Canberra punished Newcastle's early errors, starting with Ben Rogers losing flight of the ball in the floodlights and allowing the opening kick-off to bounce dead.
The Raiders led 10-0 after 10 minutes then posted two converted tries in a six-minute stretch immediately before half-time to lead 22-4 at the break.
Unlike their recovery from a 22-8 half-time deficit to beat the Cowboys 32-26 at EAS nine nights earlier, the Knights were unable to trouble Canberra's defence often enough in the second half.
"Obviously not starting with the kick-off in the first set of the game doesn't help, then from there on we made some errors, we were a little bit ill-disciplined, and we gave the Raiders the field position they needed to find a couple of their kicks," Stone said.
"I thought we defended OK, I thought our energy was OK for most of the night, but we frustrated ourselves at times and we compounded our errors and sometimes our discipline let us down."
In an often spiteful game, Knights five-eighth Ben Rogers and Raiders winger Daniel Vidot were sin-binned for fighting in the 63rd minute.
Rogers's flurry of punches that started the brawl and Vidot's raised knee in the subsequent melee could attract further scrutiny today from the NRL match review committee.
A minute later, Raiders pair Josh McCrone and Bronson Harrison were reported for an alleged "chicken-wing" tackle on Zeb Taia which partially dislocated the Newcastle back-rower's shoulder and almost certainly ended his season.
The Knights were on the wrong end of several contentious decisions by referees Ashley Klein and Matt Cecchin throughout the game.
Gidley said he felt frustrated but Stone would not comment on the performance of the officials.
Newcastle's only first-half points came through the first of two Cooper Vuna tries. Gidley missed the conversion attempt, ending his streak of consecutive goals at 23 equal to the club record he shares with former captain Andrew Johns.
Centre Junior Sau powered over to score from Jarrod Mullen's pass in the 48th minute and Vuna added his second from Mullen's chip kick in the 64th.
But the Knights were on the back foot for long periods and could not add to their tally.
[PI9017] Defending NYC premiers Canberra kept their finals hopes alive with a 42-26 victory over Newcastle in the under 20s curtain-raiser.
Herald
