Despite a 52-24 loss to the New Zealand Warriors in Round one on Sunday, reserve grade coach Simon Woolford believes his side showed some good fight in the second half.
The red and blues suffered a 42-point lashing from the Warriors in the first half, only to bounce back and out score the home side in the second stanza by ten points.
Woolford now wants his side to take that second half form into next week, and come up with a consistent performance.
“We got some things right that we didn’t quite get right in the first half, so it’s given us something to work on going into next week's game,” he said.
Woolford believes the Warriors ability to keep a low error count and their hunger for the ball was the key to the big defeat.
“We weren’t quite as desperate to get to the ball as they were, those sorts of things from an effort point of view were disappointing.
“When the Warriors compete like that, they’re very hard to contain."
The coach believes his reserve grade side just needs to fix up a few things and the wins will follow.
“Once we held the ball, we were able to execute some plays that we’ve been working on for the last three or four months,” Woolford explained.
“We’ve got belief those plays will work and we’ll score more tries.
“We’ll go through what happened in the first half and some of the individual plays and sort them out.”
It’s now a short turnaround for the Knights who will be looking to put their first points on the board for the 2017 season this weekend.
“The good thing about this match is we only have to wait six days and we get another opportunity,” said Woolford.
“it’s important we remain upbeat after Round 1 and we need to get it right next weekend against Wyong.”
All three grades will be in action this Saturday at McDonald Jones Stadium with the reserve grade side kicking off at 12:40pm.
