Newcastle Knights coach Wayne Bennett lost playmakers Darius Boyd, Kurt Gidley and Tyrone Roberts to injury in the Club's 30-8 loss against Penrith on Saturday.
In a match described by Bennett as a 'crazy', Boyd suffered a hamstring injury in the first half and didn't return for the remainder of the match.
Gidley also left the field in the first stanza with concussion after copping a heavy hit and remained on the bench.
Roberts was another casualty in the second half with concussion. The No.7 tried to stop Panthers lock Adam Docker from scoring in the 64th minute, but came off second best and was also forced to watch the rest of the game from the sidelines.
All three will be further assessed on Sunday as the Knights turn their attention to next Sunday's home game against the Canberra Raiders at Hunter Stadium.
"It’s a tough call at the moment and I don’t know what I’m going to do," Bennett said after the match about who could replace Boyd, Gidley and Roberts if any were unavailable for next week.
"We’ve got two with concussion and one with a hamstring, so some major ones.
“I don’t know (about Boyd).
"The hamstring could be a week or it could be three but it could be more than a week I would assume.
"The concussions, well Kurt still isn’t good at the moment.
"So you’d have to assume he’d be border line, while Tyrone is starting to come good."
Centre Dane Gagai played out the match at fullback in Boyd's absence and Bennett was happy with his effort.
The veteran coach wasn't sure if Gagai would replace Boyd at No.1 though and would also have to wait on scan results on Boyd's hamstring before making any final decision.
"We’ve got to find a centre if we put him (Dane) at fullback and we’ve got to find a centre and someone else," he says.
"We’ll also have to find another hooker, but it’s too early for me to call on those.
"I was happy with Dane’s performance though.
"He got a couple of wicked bounces there, but if he had played there on a regular basis he would have picked those a little better.
"That’s just time and experience and he hasn’t had that yet, but when he carried the ball he was great and enthusiastic.
"Most of them are pretty ok, it’s just bumps and bruises after the game."
Of course Bennett was disappointed with the final result, but he couldn't fault the Knights' effort.
With only one player left on the bench at full-time, the team was forced to play forward Alex McKinnon at five-eighth and centre, while Beau Scott also spent some time on the edges of the field to cover in defence.
"It wasn’t what we wanted, but it happened so we can’t do anything about and can’t change that," he says.
"But I was elated with their effort.
"We can fix the things that happened today with a bit more luck, but I just thought they stuck at it tremendously there and didn’t deserve to get beaten by 30-odd points with the amount of effort they put in.
"We had a pretty poor first half with the ball, but we tackled great and the second half we were just up against it, but I thought they stayed at it.
"McKinnon played in the centres and at five-eighth. His role is a forward, so he had a very mixed day.
"And Beau also ended up out wide in the centres to sure up that right-side defence a bit. It was crazy day."
Bennett was also pleased with five-eighth Michael Dobson, who did his best in his first NRL match for five years despite a number of key playmakers falling around him.
"I was happy with his defence and I thought he was pretty brave and tried hard," Bennett said of Dobson.
"He was losing a lot of quality players around him with Jarrod not playing as well.
"He was carrying most of the pressure and I didn’t have a recognised hooker out there because I had to give Travis some sort of a break. So that made his job a little bit harder.
"I just thought he was brave and did the best he could."
