NYC Newcastle Knights coach Todd Lowrie was amazed his side came up with a draw after losing both halves to HIAs, forcing a re-shuffle of their line up and playing with 12 men for a period in the second half.
“We were quite good in the first half and then we had a guy go to the bin for 10 minutes and we’d also lost both our halves with HIAs so we were doing it a bit tough,” explained Lowrie.
“We had some blokes playing out of position and a lot longer than they normally play.
“We struggled for a big period in the second half where they had all the ball and didn’t make too many errors and we had none of the ball and made it pretty hard for ourselves.
“To the team's credit, we managed to come back and level it up and walk away with one point.
While the result was not exactly what Lowrie was hoping for, he admitted it was a fair effort considering the circumstances.
“I suppose to just be in with a chance to give ourselves one point was a pretty big effort,” Lowrie commented.
“We had no ball for 25 minutes in the second half and I think they made only one error in that time.
“As soon as we got the ball back, we scored a try to level it back up so it was a massive effort to be able to do that.”
Returning from injury, Brodie Jones made his first appearance for the Under 20s this year.
“Brodie probably played a little bit longer than what we were expecting him to play just with all the injuries that we had,” said Lowrie.
“He went on just after half time and ended up finishing in the halves so he was probably going to only play 20 or 30 minutes but played nearly 35, 40.
“It was good for him to get out and play some footy which he hasn’t done for about a year so it was good for him.”
The NYC coach praised all 17 for their contribution on field with a special mention to a few standouts who went above and beyond.
“Some guys like Henry Penn, he played 80 minutes,” Lowrie added.
“He played in the back row, some in the centres and he ended up in the middle of the field in the forwards which was a really big effort.”
“Zac Hosking ended up playing 80 minutes for us and finished off at hooker which is a position I don’t know that he’s ever played before.
“Sam McIntyre scored two really good tries for us.
“A lot of guys had to play in different positions and a bit more minutes than they were used to so in the end, they did pretty well.”
