A heavy defeat has dropped the NYC Newcastle Knights to fifth place on the ladder.
Coach Todd Lowrie admits his team was surprised by a solid Brisbane Broncos side on Saturday and struggled to regain their composure.
“I thought we started the game well and the first 20 minutes was a good high quality game of footy,” Lowrie commented.
“They were doing things well and we were doing things well and then we had a couple of things not go our way which we weren’t good enough to come back from.
“They kept rolling on and they rolled over us.”
Lowrie says a lengthy error count became costly in the last 40 minutes.
“They scored a couple of tries and we had a couple of costly errors and penalties that just didn’t give us a chance,” explained Lowrie.
“To the opposition’s credit, they capitalised on our mistakes and we weren’t good enough to turn the momentum.
“I think we were just tired in the end, they had all the ball there for a period.”
It didn’t help that unstoppable Broncos forward Payne Haas recorded a hat-trick.
“We knew he was a good player and he didn’t let them down,” explained Lowrie.
“He is a very good talent and unfortunately he was playing for the other team being a local kid.”
The loss has put the Knights Under 20s side back to fifth place with several sides threatening below.
“The top three have got a bit of a jump on everybody so fourth to about ninth there’s only a couple of points in it,” the NYC coach said.
“It is pretty congested so every win is really important at the moment.
“The Broncos are eighth but they could jump to fourth or so with one win so you’ve just got to win your games.”