It was a frustrated coach and captain that fronted the media after Sunday’s loss to the Manly Sea Eagles at Brookvale Oval.
As the team succumbs to its fifth consecutive loss, captain Kurt Gidley assures the team has not lost faith in it’s potential.
“I’ve been in worse spots than this,” Gidley said.
“This is a tough one because we started the year well.
“The only thing we can do is more hard work and more homework and more reviews on your own game and the team’s game.
“There’s only one way out of it and it’s about rolling up your sleeves and concentrating on more work at training with our defence."
A number of easy tries for the opposition, particularly one just before half time, coupled with their own errors hurt the Knights.
“We played nice and direct and were sharp enough and made some little half chances for ourselves,” Rick Stone said of the first half performance.
“We started the second half alright and put back-to-back sets together for a try and gave ourselves a little bit of a chance.
“Every time we were gaining some momentum we would give Manly the luxury of getting some ascendency back and scoring another try basically against the run of play.
“Their class players were the difference.
“(Daly) Cherry-Evans’ 40-20 was a decent play but we still didn’t manage to defend that as well as we would have liked.
“I just think we struggled with the defensive speed and managing the ruck.
“We didn’t quite sort out the play the ball speed at times and we could have been a little bit more proactive on the end of the line there.
“We had a couple of little half chances ourselves but couldn’t quite put polish on the need of our sets or manage to get the ball down over the line.
“Defensively we have some work to do, to give up 30 points is hard. We need to do better than that."
The Knights managed to make it over the line on three separate occasions but were denied the tries after the video referee overruled the on-field decision.
“There were a couple of close ones that went against us today,” Stone said.
“I think Dane (Gagai) was desperately unlucky not to be awarded one of the tries in the first half because clearly to me it looked like the ball hit the foot before it hit the ground.
“I don’t know how the video ref comes to conclusion…it doesn’t have to be a great kick, it just has to make contact with his foot and I think it did."
The disallowed tries impacted on the Knights' momentum and confidence.
“We were pretty confident with both of them and obviously it’s tough because you don’t get the points on the scoreboard," Gidley added.
“They are tough to deal with mentally because you think you’ve done the right thing and scored your points and then get your head around the next minute your defending.
“Our line defence is the biggest disappointment and probably has been over the last month with the amount of points we’re letting in."
The Knights return to Hunter Stadium in Round 10, hosting the Wests Tigers at Hunter Stadium on Sunday May 17.
