Reserve Grade Newcastle Knights coach Simon Woolford was pretty pleased with the effort of his men on the weekend, taking it to the minor premiers, the Wyong Roos.
“As far as the first half, we were nearly perfect with the footy, I think we might have had one error,” said Woolford.
Having said that, Woolford admits their last 40 minutes wasn’t as polished.
“We let a try in just before half time and we came out after half time and let one in which is where I thought we lost the game,” he said.
“We went from being really good in the first half and just didn’t get the job done in the second half.
“We had a couple of injuries, we had a couple of replacements that we don’t normally make so we had a little bit of adversity to overcome and I thought the boys tried really hard.
“To get beaten by eight points by the minor premiers and to have them down 18-6 in that first half, we did a lot of things right.”
Five-eighth Jaelen Feeney did some damage early with a double in the first 20 minutes.
“Jaelen (Feeney) was really good with the ball,” commented Woolford.
“I thought our halves controlled things really well; we kicked well, we took some nice field position and laid on three tries in the first half so there was a lot to like.
“We just weren’t able to back it up in the second half but we’re going into a semi-final now so we’ve got to take a lot of positives out of it.”
ISP have their elimination final against the North Sydney Bears at Kogarah on Sunday.
“They beat us twice this year and they only beat us on full time a few weeks ago so there’s no doubt it is a team we can beat,” explained Woolford.
“We need to knuckle down again this week and we’ve been able to gather a fair bit of momentum over the last couple of months so we should be going into the semis with a bit of confidence.”
And a bonus, they’ll have competition top try scorer Tom Hughes back on the wing.
“We thought it was smart to give him another week off with the hamstring injury and he’ll be ready and raring to go this week,” said the ISP coach.
