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Competition - NRL. Round - Round 17. Teams - Newcastle Knights v Wests Tigers. Date - 2nd of July 2017. Venue - McDonald Jones Stadium

Coach Nathan Brown and forward Jamie Buhrer spoke to the media following Sunday's loss to the Wests Tigers at McDonald Jones Stadium.

Brown admits he was very disappointed with the result.

“It was the first time in 18 months that we have been favourites and we did build it up because it was a big game,” said Brown.

“We made some changes to our team in important positions and we didn’t attack as well as we have done.

“It was definitely our worst performance this year without a doubt.

“Our attack struggled, it was clearly our worst attacking performance for a long time,” Brown commented.

“You can’t just blame one player.

“Brock (Lamb) going back at his age was not a bad thing and he went back and had a really good game in Reserve Grade.

“Reserve Grade had a great win and he has handled himself well as did Hokko when he went back.”

“Danny Levi’s good and bad was a long way apart and the difference in his gap and his game was a long way.

“Rossy (Nathan Ross) had an unhappy day at fullback today; it was his second game at fullback so there were some blokes in key positions whose performances really fluctuated a lot which probably didn’t help.”

Brown said Dane Gagai played on the left to fit in with the overall balance of the team.

“Just with the balance of the players we had available for selection, we had him returning kicks on the wing and Joe (Wardle) has spent most of his career more on the right side,” he said.

“Gags has played a lot of the left as a younger bloke and I thought he was probably our best player which is a credit to him.”

Brown maintains it was one game where their position on the ladder was talked about.

“Today the table was spoken about because we played the side that was equal with us and the side that you’d think by looking at the table, were roughly on par with us,” explained the Knights coach.

“It is not normally something we talk about but this week in reality we were challenging for the spoon so it was certainly spoken about.”

On his return from injury, Jamie Buhrer said it was a hard result to take but is optimistic the Knights can get a few more wins this season.

“There were plenty of games that we played this year where we felt we could have won,” Buhrer said.

“Today obviously wasn’t one of them with the result how it went but I’m certainly confident that we can get some wins up towards the back half of the year but we’ve certainly got to be a lot better than that.”