Knights coach Adam O’Brien has slammed his team after a 28-12 loss to Ricky Stuart’s Raiders that “lacked any sort of grit”.
Newcastle were outclassed by the Raiders in front of their home crowd at McDonald Jones Stadium, failing to stave off a surge that saw Canberra score four tries in 32 minutes.
Speaking in the post-match press conference, O’Brien cut a disappointed figure and explained his side were taught a lesson by Stuart’s men.
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“Our game lacked any sort of grit, we were impatient. It felt like we wanted the highlight reel,” O’Brien said.
“Whereas the other mob, when you score four tries on the last play and they were scrappy tries. But that’s what they wanted.
“They wanted to come here and get in a scrap and I don’t think 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.
“It’s pretty easy to dissect from my opinion.”
O’Brien mentioned at the start of the press conference his side never recovered after a Tyson Gamble try was disallowed 24 minutes into the game.
Fullback Kalyn Ponga broke through Canberra’s defences and found his five-eighth who surged away.
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In the meantime Ponga was floored by Hudson Young who was sent to the sin bin, but the match review official disallowed the four-pointer due to an obstruction from Tyson Frizell.
When pressed on the moment, O’Brien said he had no excuses for his team.
“The disallowed tries have nothing to do with our problems at the moment, there’s some stuff we need to take ownership of,” O’Brien said.
“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.
“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.
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