A month ago the NYC nib Newcastle Knights sat in ninth place on the ladder after an away drubbing at the hands of the North Queensland Cowboys.
Fast forward four weeks and the young Knights sit in equal fourth place after three straight wins and a great victory against the table-topping Penrith Panthers.
Coach Todd Lowrie couldn’t hide his delight after the fantastic win.
“Penrith are obviously a pretty good footy team, and that’s three wins on the trot now,” he explained.
“It was a good, tough performance.”
The final score was 28-22 in favour of the red and blues, with a very late try to fullback Matt Cooper deciding the contest.
“It’s hard to single out anyone for praise, because it was a pretty tough team performance,” Lowrie said.
“They all stuck to the game plan and at the end they came up with the big play that we’d practiced.”
And while the NYC Knights are always capable of scoring points, Lowrie said the most pleasing thing about this match was strong defence.
“The best thing today was that when they had the momentum, we didn’t leak too many points," he said.
“That’s been a weakness of ours this year, so to defend well against the best attacking team in the comp is good.”
Like the NRL side, the Under 20s team now have a week off.
But while first grade will be taking on the Melbourne Storm down in Melbourne, the NYC team will be playing up on the Sunshine Coast.
“We’ll rest up now, have a good bye and then we’ll have two away games before our next bye,” Lowrie said.
“It’s good to take the win now, but we’ve got another important period coming up.”
