Knights skipper Dane Gagai lamented the lack of cohesion from his side in the heavy loss to Penrith, believing there were too many “individuals” on the park.
Their task was always going to be tough against the red-hot Panthers, but to amplify the difficulty of the assignment, Newcastle missed the jump by allowing two early tries.
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From there, the Knights fell into a 32-0 hole and barring two second half tries, failed to provide much of a challenge for the Panthers.
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Gagai was seen post-game addressing his beaten side, with a reporter asking the Knights captain about the full time meeting.
“It was just around that performance, even though we’ve been beaten in the past, I don’t think we’ve been beaten like that,” an honest Gagai conceded in the post-game press conference.
“I think, myself included, a few of us struggled to get into the game and get that connections.
“When you have a bunch of individuals out there, it’s pretty hard to win.
“If there’s too many people making errors, missing tackles and giving away penalties it’s always going to be hard to win so we just needed to come together as a group so that’s what that was. Just sticking together.”
Panthers leap into top four with big win | 02:08
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The loss piles the pressure on coach Adam O’Brien, who is fighting to save his Knights career.
The club is in a precarious position, only two points off the bottom of the table.
O’Brien admitted the Knights were outplayed and said it’s best to move on from it with a trip to Townsville on the docket next week.
“We got some lessons from a pretty clinical footy team. They made us pay,” O’Brien said.
“We can’t feel sorry for ourselves for too long.”
