Knights coach Adam O’Brien didn’t see his facet’s “horrible” efficiency in opposition to the Eels coming, however he has no plans to “kick them to death” over it.
The Knights leaked seven tries in a 43-12 humiliation the place they missed a staggering 44 tackles and conceded 15 linebreaks — 10 of these alone within the first half.
But to be truthful, in all probability nobody noticed Friday’s consequence coming after the Knights took the reigning premiers to golden level simply two weeks in the past.
And it’s that tight end in Round 7 together with a handful of others that’s taken a toll on the Knights, in line with O’Brien.
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“I didn’t see it coming. It was a horrible performance, let’s be honest, but they haven’t been horrible so I’m not going to kick them to death either,” he mentioned within the post-game press convention.
“I think it’s been a really big month on-field and off-field. There’s some stuff going on that you’d know about then obviously losing ‘Brails’ (Jayden Brailey to an ACL injury).
“They’re going to sound like excuses but I don’t care if they sound like excuses. The team’s been working really hard for a month so there’s that part of me…
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“I didn’t see it but I watched last night’s game (Sharks vs Cowboys) and I thought our last week’s opposition showed the same signs so that tells me it was a pretty hard game up there (in Townsville) last week.
“We’ve had two golden points before that so I’ll give them a bit of an out there.
“We just started, our defence we were quite loose through the middle — that’s a sign. We’ve defending really well this year — we haven’t lost that ability in six days but we’ve lost the will or the gas in the tank clearly.
“We need this bye, it’s been a long campaign.”
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O’Brien mentioned he’ll give his squad an prolonged break over the bye, however one participant that plans on doing extras throughout that point off is skipper Kalyn Ponga.
Ponga returned from a head knock final week however began off the bench. He performed his first sport at five-eighth on Friday and had a troublesome evening, lacking 5 tackles and failing to have an actual influence on the sport.
“I’m probably going to work in the break because I want to be better than what I was tonight,” Ponga mentioned.
“I’ve got to own my performance, I’m obviously disappointed with it.
“My second game back it’s definitely a learning experience (but) I’m not going to let that performance eat me up, I’m going to look at it, learn from it.
“I’ve just moved to six, it’s a journey, it’s an experience and I want to be better. But I’ve got to own my performance and I wasn’t good enough.”
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O’Brien made the decision over the summer season to shift Ponga to five-eighth regardless of being a consultant fullback.
When requested if had any ideas about shifting Ponga again to No.1 O’Brien mentioned: “He answered pretty well… He played 80 minutes at six for the first time… I’m not stupid.”
The Knights now have a 16-day turnaround, which O’Brien believes assist “fill the tanks back up.”
“I think even our harshest critics would agree that we’ve shown a lot more metal than what we did tonight so certainly there’s one part of me that’s confident we need to fill the tanks back up and we can get the team back on track,” he mentioned.
“Even teams that have been up the top for a long time have a day where things aren’t great and we had one tonight.”
They face the Titans in Round 12 and are more likely to get Adam Elliott again from a groin damage.
Source: www.foxsports.com.au