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Newcastle coach Adam O’Brien was left bemused by a series of refereeing decisions that he thought went against his side as they went down 21-16 to St George Illawarra in a chaotic clash in Wollongong.
The Knights were not awarded a single set restart across the 80 minutes and had the chance to fight back late taken off them when the officials failed to spot an offside that could have given them the ball within Dragons territory late on.
“I don’t want to be that coach, but we had some guys have an offday and I reckon there were other people that had off days,” he said, wording carefully to avoid the ire of NRL officials.
“I’ll take that up during the week. I’m getting sick of taking it up. I’ve scheduled a meeting with them.
“I’ve left it alone for the first five rounds but there’s some inconsistencies that keep happening in the game that I need clarity on.
“I’ll have to add to that tonight. Was it 6-0 the set restarts? We’re a big team, we fight to play the ball quick and we often find our front. There’s some bizarre stuff.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got our own backyard to clean up. I don’t want to be the guy that uses that as an excuse. It’s frustrating but there’s some stuff there.”
St George Illawarra have been very poor of late but fired up late to get the job done, taking the lead through a 78th-minute field goal and then sealing the win with a cathartic try with seconds on the clock. The emotion as Mat Feagai cross was palpable.
The simple bits that Anthony Griffin’s men have lacked, especially in completion rates, were good and the service to their flanks was drastically improved on recent weeks.
“It wasn’t pretty and our execution wasn’t what it needed to be at times, but there were good periods that were built off long periods in possession,” said Anthony Griffin.
“We completed at nearly 90% and it allowed us to get a bit of rhythm against tired defence.
“A couple of weeks ago we probably don’t win that game, but we kept coming and they got what they deserved in the end.
“We’ll get a lot of good lessons. We’ve been learning hard lessons and it’s been costing us two points, but today, I’m really proud of them.”
The left edge of Moses Suli and Feagai fired, ably fed by Ben Hunt, were superb and created three of the Dragons’ four tries, though questions will still remain about the quality and cohesion of the Dragons’ defence.
This was just their second win since the BBQ-gate fiasco that derailed last season for St George Illawarra, and there are still attitude issues, too: not least on Zac Lomax, whose leap onto the back of Tyson Frizell after a Dragons try was a terrible look.
Knights veteran David Klemmer was still laying down the law to the centre at fulltime, and none of Lomax’s teammates appeared to disagree with him. Hook Griffin confirmed that he would be speaking to the player afterwards about the incident.
Newcastle are down the bare bones, with halfback Adam Clune the latest to join a growing injury list, and did well to be in the fight as long as they were.
Kalyn Ponga was back to something close to his best, though the talk will inevitably focus on his contract situation given the mid-game revelations that the Knights have withdrawn their offer to him.
“I think he showed today why he was worth the wait,” said O’Brien. “He showed last week and his performance today showed how committed he is to this team and we’re committed to him too.
“They’re still going through the process, both sides. Things are tracking along and my focus has been on the team and certainly the way he played today, his focus has been on the team too.”
“I thought we improved on stuff that we worked on in the week. We spent time on our attack and I thought we played some entertaining and effective footy.
“We have to fight our way out. We have to turn up every day with the attitude that we had this week.
“Our attitude hasn’t been bad, we’ve been on the back of four six-day turnarounds and we haven’t had a lot of time together. We did this week and I felt that came out.
“Unfortunately, you spend your week trying to improve in attack and we didn’t want to defend at points tonight.”
These are two teams that have been bang out of form and watching the first half hour, it was easy to see why. The only piece of quality – a 50m Ben Hunt drop out, into the wind, that found touch – resulted in the only points, off the boot of Zac Lomax.
(Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)
When a try did come, it was underwhelming. Andrew McCullough pushed over some poor Knights defence to score from a yard out.
The Dragons suddenly kicked into life. Moses Mbye put Tariq Sims through a huge gap, but he inexplicably failed to pass to Feagai on the wing and was tackled by Ponga.
They’d live to rue the bombed try. A meandering Knights attack was defended passively by the Dragons, with four players failing to grab Ponga, who offloaded for Enari Tuala to score.
The Dragons would rue it yet more early in the second half. It took a bit of chaos, but Newcastle played with desperation while the Dragons stood and watched.
A kick went up and three Knights competed for it. Edrick Lee came down with it, passed off the floor to Leo Thompson and then Dane Gagai, who did a one-two with Tyson Frizell to score.
It was exceptional urgency, but again passive play from St George Illawarra. Referee Ben Cummins, who took a tumble in the rush to check the grounding, seemed to be making more effort on the football than some of the Dragons defenders.
Their effort to equalise couldn’t be faulted. Ben Hunt created the space, kicked through and when Frizell couldn’t deal with it, Jack Bird was on the spot to score.
Suddenly, the Dragons were fired up. Hunt again was the architect, throwing a long pass to Suli for Feagai to get over.
The defensive issues, however, had not gone away. Jayden Su’A went for the big shot rather than the ball, allowing David Klemmer to offload. It spread to Bradman Best, who made Lomax and Mikaele Ravalawa look very slow before finding Ponga on the inside.
Twice, the Dragons might have created points for Feagai, only for the final pass to fail, and Junior Amone was held up over the line. Francis Molo was caught on the last in the shadow of the posts and the feeling that it was a missed opportunity began to grow.
Eventually, cool heads prevailed and Lomax was able to slot the field goal with two to play.
The cool heads didn’t extend much further, with Feagai adding a madcap try to seal the deal, and were lost completely as the red and white shirts piled up behind the posts celebrating.