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Newcastle have come from behind – and survived a late scare – to grab a vital 30-28 win over the Dolphins in Perth.
They have now registered five wins in a row and rocketed up to sixth on the live ladder, albeit with the two teams below them, Cronulla and South Sydney, set to face off directly after them.
The manner of the win will please Adam O’Brien as much as it will irritate Wayne Bennett.
The Knights had plenty of adversity and found enough points to get the two points, while the Dolphins, for the second week in a row, had the game in their grasp and didn’t make it count.
Newcastle missed out on Magic Round, but seemed intent on putting on a show at this mini-Magic at Optus Stadium.
They attacked wide early and looked to be set for a big win, with Dom Young racing clear to find Kalyn Ponga on the inside.
The game spun, however, on a double incident in the 23rd minute that saw Adam Elliott forced from the field to stitch a nasty cut and, as he left, Lachlan Fitzgibbon binned for a hip-drop.
With the Knights left defensive edge in tatters, the Dolphins ran in three tries in ten minutes, all through Jamayne Isaako – the third of which a spectacular high catch that left Greg Marzhew standing dumbfounded.
With the score at 22-12 in the 50th minute, the Knights then put on the attack that they had threatened all day, running in three of their own in a short burst to take the game away.
Redcliffe came back, as they invariably do, but couldn’t get the leveller. Indeed, with a minute to play, they thought they had won a penalty, only for referee Grant Atkins to spot a scrum infringement that let Newcastle off the hook.
In the box, Bennett seethed. O’Brien let out a huge sigh of relief.
After the match, the Newcastle coach was in favourite of the decision. “I could see it, he clearly grabbed hold of him,” he told the press conference.
Bennett, in his trademark fashion, refused to comment. “You could say that the referee referees to the laws of the game,” he said. “You need to ask the referee. I didn’t call the penalty.”
Ideological consistency goes a long way in rugby league. If you know exactly what you stand for, you can go back time and again when the game is going against you, confident in your systems and processes.
That fairly sums up Newcastle at the moment. Their 1-7 are totally settled and, largely, the key to everything the Knights do.
Today, they knew that the Dolphins have struggled in edge defence and brought their shift plays early, backing Valynce Te Whare to make poor defensive reads, which he did, and Young to have too much pace for Tesi Niu, which he absolutely did.
Once you have the plan, it’s a case of making it come to life.
Today, that involved second phase work on the left edge to get Ponga and Bradman Best into the game, which Fitzgibbon duly provided with five offloads. Te Whare gets ahead of the ball so frequently that a double pump or a standing offload was always a chance of getting through.
On the right, the quick shift was tried multiple times in an attempt to get Young free. Again, it bore fruit more than once.
In the Knights’ system, the backline makes the play and the middles just need to compete to give them a chance. But for a short-handed period, that was the case.
The system element came in when behind. At no point did the plan change: they just backed themselves to do Plan A well enough to work in the end. It took a while, but it did.
You don’t have to watch much Dolphins football to know how they’re going to play.
Indeed, you didn’t really have to watch any Dolphins football to know how they were going to play, because Wayne Bennett was only going to go one way.
Uncle Wayne has had a pretty defined style for years and tasked with setting up a team from scratch, it was always going to start with a focus on being hard to beat and doing the free things well.
The limitations of that have been shown up eventually over the course of 23 rounds with a less-than-stellar roster, but mostly it’s been their greatest strength.
Not for the first time, this was a game in which they were perfectly positioned to beat the team that beat itself.
Yes, their tries too scoring – understatement of the century for Isaako’s third – but the bulk of them were the result of staying the game when things weren’t in their favour and then striking while the iron was hot when it was.
Redcliffe rarely play particularly expansive footy, but when they saw the chance, they went for it.
The dual departure of Fitzgibbon to the bin and Adam Elliott with a nasty cut left the Knights’ right wide open, and they went there ruthlessly. The Dolphins put on a shift in their own half is a rare occurrence, but when that’s where the gap is and you only have ten minutes to exploit it, go as often as possible. It was super smart footy.
Naturally, in an equal-sided match, they were never likely to be a match for a red hot Knights team.
Newcastle eventually hauled them in, as might have been expected. It was 14-0 in the sin period and 30-14 in the other 70 minutes. That was the story of the match.