The Newcastle Knights have reviewed Sunday’s tough loss to the Cronulla Sharks and strive to build on the challenging experience as the team heads into Round 11.
The pursuit of improvement has begun with identifying what went awry on the weekend in video review sessions with both the team and individuals.
“We’ve had one or two tough sessions, obviously after the score line we had,” coach Nathan Brown said on Tuesday.
“There are some blokes who got some good feedback from the game and some who in certain areas didn’t deliver a performance you would like.
“The players have responded well and have pretty much all year in the way of getting good feedback and negative feedback.”
This week Brown has called on his players to fulfil their role individually within the team.
“It’s more about getting our individual technique right in certain areas of defence and getting our systems right and getting them right for long periods,” he said.
“We have proven at different stages this year, when we get certain things right for periods of time we can look reasonable.
“There are times when we look not so reasonable, which the scoreboard suggested the other day.”
After the Knights were denied points on Sunday, the team will focus on maintaining greater possession against the Wests Tigers this Saturday at Campbelltown Stadium.
“Conceding points is a problem. When you are conceding so many, it’s certainly hard to score," he said.
“The opposition is scoring a lot of points because they are maintaining a lot of possession.
“Without possession the best of the attacking sides do struggle to score.
“It’s about finding a balance of consistency and getting our defence and techniques right for longer periods of time and we got a good lesson in that area from Cronulla.”
While reluctant to make excuses for the poor result, Brown acknowledged the team’s overall inexperience as a major factor in the final result.
“The younger players, being young and inexperienced, their leeway is much different than what an experienced player would get,” he said.
“What we can’t shy away from is whether the effort is good.
“For us it’s about trying to get some consistency in some key areas of the game.
“If we can build and get some improvement in those areas and get to a stage where we do things for longer periods of time, it shouldn’t matter who we play, then we should get an opportunity to get the best out of ourselves.
“At the end of the day we need to get a vast improvement form certain individuals in certain areas of the game.”
