The Reserve Grade Newcastle Knights’ steady improvement has paid off with the side posting a satisfying 62-26 win over the Manly Sea Eagles a Cessnock Oval on Saturday.
“It was a really good performance,” coach Matt Lantry
“I’ve said consistently for the last three games the effort has been great and a win’s been just around the corner.
“It was just a matter of when. We were hopefully we could jag one just before the end of the year.
“I think everything clicked for us to score 62 points.”
The team showed impressive solidarity in defence at the start of the game that laid the platform for the side to later pile on points in attack.
“I thought they defended reasonably well initially as we didn’t have a lot of ball,” he said.
“They had 28 plays to our six within the first 15 minutes. To come out the other side of that it relied on the way we executed and the patience we showed with the footy. I think we completed all but two of our 17 sets.
“That really set us a good platform to go on with that throughout the game.”
The Knights crossed the line 11 times with a total of eight of the Knights’ players scoring tries.
“To try to pick our three best performers was really difficult as it was a quality team contribution, which is nice,” he said.
A standout for Lantry was five-eighth Jaelen Feeney who scored a hat-trick before half time.
Lantry stressed the importance of continuing good form into the side’s upcoming encounter against the Wyong Roos at Hunter Stadium on Saturday.
“The challenge for the group is to repeat that performance and not just make it a one off,” he said.
“There were a couple of things he did himself to create opportunities to score tries, other times he had some good support play to finish off with.
“We will do some review after the weekend. The disappointing point is the 26 points, so we will make sure we will tighten our defence and will fine tune a few things in our attack.
“If we give that many opportunities to Wyong, they will really hurt us this weekend.
“We have two more games to go, so it’s really a challenge for our group that we finish on a high.”
It's a three game fixture on Saturday at Hunter Stadium with the Reserve Grade Knights taking on the Wyong Roos followed by the NRL Knights' match against the Gold Coast Titans at 4pm. Buy you match ticket HERE.