Reserve Grade Newcastle Knights coach Simon Woolford says his side came out of the blocks firing against the Newtown Jets, but the errors quickly crept in, resulting in a two-point loss on Saturday.
“We started pretty well and got an early try on the board but then some handling errors and some penalties happened on the back of that,” explained Woolford.
“Those handling errors gave Newtown good field position, they were able to capitalise and they scored three tries in a 20-minute period.
“We had chances late in the first half to claw that deficit back but our execution let us down."
The ISP coach said it was an arm wrestle in the second half.
“We got two tries in a row, in consecutive sets and we really should have gone on with it there,” said Woolford.
“We did a really good job coming out of our own end and we had a lot of guys run a lot of metres.
“It was the most metres we’ve run this year in that game and we just lacked a bit of polish at the end of our sets and weren’t quite good enough.”
Woolford said he would have preferred the win going into the bye this week.
“Statistically, you would think with the amount of metres we did, we should have won that game,” he said.
“We now have to wait another couple of weeks to make amends.”
An early try from forward Sam Mataora showed their work at training is paying off.
“It was a little play we practiced during the week and it was good to see the boys execute it and Sammy get the try,” Woolford commented.
“A couple of times he looked like he was going to score again but the goal post got in his way.
“We made 11 errors against the (New Zealand) Warriors and we salvaged a draw out of that but this week we made 13 and we weren’t quite good enough.”
Getting to the pointy end of the year the Reserve Grade coach knows they’ll have to pick up their pace if they want to play finals footy.
“We spoke about that in our future,” Woolford explained.
“We can’t keep talking about having a good effort and not quite be good enough to finish teams off.
“We need to start putting some wins together and making some sort of charge towards the semi-finals.
“We certainly have the team to do that but as individuals we need to look at some errors we keep making and fix them and until we do hold some accountability, we are not going to go anywhere.”
After the break, the Knights encounter the St George Illawarra Cutters at Jubilee Oval.
“They have a couple of wins above us on the ladder so we can’t be talking about the same thing in a month’s time, we need to start winning some games,” admitted Woolford.
“We have trained hard and the guys will get three days off and we’ll come back next week, we’ll have a long week to prepare.
“By all reports the NRL squad will have some players back from injury so that means one or two might filter back down to the team.
“It is just about recharging and getting over the disappointment of the week and making sure we come ready for Monday to put in a good solid week’s preparation.”
