nib Newcastle Knights centre Peter Mata’utia said the biggest disappointment about Sunday’s loss to the Wests Tigers was letting down the fans.
“I think that’s what is hurting,” said Mata’utia.
“Not just the result but hearing little girls wearing Knights jerseys saying we’re losers and parents saying how much they spent to bring their kid to come and watch us... that just shows us how much we mean to the town.
“We definitely need to give something back to the town and our team.”
The centre admits the players are hurting from the defeat and still trying to work out what went wrong.
“It wasn’t the result we wanted as a team and it was pretty disappointing,” Mata’utia added.
“We spoke about it all week; this was our chance to get off the bottom so there shouldn’t have been more motivation than that for the team to try and win on the weekend.
“We let ourselves down and they seemed to want it more than we did.”
Mata’utia said there are no excuses for Sunday’s performance.
“We said from the start of the year that age is not an excuse and we can’t keep going back to that,” he said.
“They had a young team on the weekend too so we just got caught on the back foot the opening five minutes and it just led on from there.”
The eldest Mata’utia brother will be doing everything in his power to get himself and his teammates back on track.
“I haven’t given up and I’ll definitely make sure these boys don’t give up as well,” he said.
“Like I said to the boys a couple of weeks ago, whether you win or lose, the next week is different anyway so you’ve got to go out there the next week and earn the two points.
“I will definitely be driving these boys to get back up to try to win against the Bulldogs.”
Mata’utia feels the key at Belmore will be playing their own game.
“The key is to worry about ourselves this week and definitely make the Bulldogs worry about us,” Mata’utia stated.
“Keep going back to what we were doing in the first half against the Dragons and how we played, sticking to our sets and the game plan the coach gives us.”
