Reserve Grade Newcastle Knights coach Simon Woolford believes attitude was a big factor in the Round 7 loss to the Blacktown Workers.
“It was pretty clear right from the opening set of the game that we didn’t turn up with the right attitude and didn’t show our opposition the respect they deserved,” explained Woolford.
“A complete contrast from the week before but in the end, we got what we deserved.
“Blacktown had 12 men for the last half hour of the game and I think they scored three tries against us in that period so it was more about our attitude and not being able to complete our sets early.”
The ISP coach said after the Knights scored the first try of the match, it was disappointing to see a decline thereafter.
“We spoke about it after the match,” said Woolford.
“We had such a good win against Penrith, and Blacktown have only won the one game last week, so we spoke about having a good attitude and not making it tough on ourselves.
“While at times on the scoreboard we were close, I knew we were off the pace, we weren’t quite there as far as our attitude was concerned and we got the result we deserved.”
Woolford admits his side lacked direction.
“I thought we didn’t really play the way we trained, turned over a lot of ball early particularly coming off our own try line and that hurt us,” he said.
“The second half was really disappointing, we scored the first try after halftime to get within two points of them and then coming out of our own end we throw an intercept pass so that was really the story of the day.
“Just one of those games we’re going to have to put behind us and move on from.”
Despite the result, Woolford did praise the work of a few.
“I thought Pauli Pauli and Josh King were really good in the middle for us, they did a really good job,” he said.
“I thought Lachlan Fitzgibbon had his normal solid game.”
Next up the Reserve Grade Knights have the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs at Cessnock.
“They might be one win behind us, but it’s more about getting our game in order this week,” said Woolford.
“It is my expectation that the senior guys, the guys that run the footy team, lead from the front every week.
“We will have a review of the game and then we’ll be moving on to get ready for the Bulldogs.”
