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Injured Newcastle captain Kurt Gidley says his Knights need to get to work on their leaky defence to have any hope of salvaging their NRL season.
The acquisition of supercoach Wayne Bennett had Knights fans hopeful. Instead, halfway through the season, Newcastle are languishing in wooden spoon territory having slumped to their fifth successive loss with a 32-16 thumping at the hands of lowly Canberra on the weekend.
After the defeat, Bennett admitted Gidley’s loss as captain and chief playmaker had a major impact.
“Kurt Gidley’s injury obviously has had a huge effect on us, bigger than I thought it would be,” Bennett said on Saturday night.
But Gidley, who will not play again this season after surgery to repair a dislocated shoulder, was downplaying his absence.
“Teams lose players all the time. You can’t put it down to that,” Gidley told AAP on Thursday.
“It’s about the team as a whole – not the individual.”
Gidley pinpointed defence as the factor that separated the Knights from the consistently-good sides.
“I think our past month defensively has been pretty disappointing, because we were starting to build a good reputation in defence,” he said.
“But this past month, we’ve really lost that.
“All the good teams have a really steely resolve in their defence and that’s what we need to get back to.
“And I know we can do it because we’ve done it in the past.”
The Knights, who have won only four of their 13 matches this season, have a bye this weekend before facing a rampant Wests Tigers side, on a seven-match winning streak, in round 16.
Gidley said the Knights needed to roll their sleeves up if they wanted to climb the ladder.
“The only way they can turn things around is just hard work, sheer hard work,” he said.
“I’ve been through stages like this where your confidence is down a bit and you’ve lost a bit of belief but hard work is what gets you out of it.
“Also you can’t worry about the big picture and the whole team and the results. You have just worry about a few little things that maybe you can do better as an individual and just tick those off.”
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