NEWCASTLE celebrated their first success under coach Nathan Brown – and ended a 231-day, seven-game winless run – with a gripping 18-16 triumph against Wests Tigers at Hunter Stadium on Sunday.
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After four losses and a draw from their first five games, last season’s wooden spooners were able to hang on for a historic victory that lifted them off the bottom of the ladder and prompted jubilant scenes in the crowd of 21,653.
“It’s good to get a win, there’s no doubt about that,’’ Brown said. “To win a close game, as well, that was good. At home, when you’re sitting on the bottom of the table and nearly 22,000 people turn up, you’ve got to be very, very happy for the fans.’’
A realistic Brown said “we’ve played far better this year and lost”, and rated his team’s first-half performance as “really poor’’.
But he was delighted that they were able to guts it out for a morale-boosting win – the first in the top grade for tyros Jaelen Feeney, Pat Mata’utia, Daniel and Jacob Saifiti and utility Will Pearsall, who was making his NRL debut.
Knights skipper Trent Hodkinson said the win “will be really good for the team’s confidence … that was a positive from my point of view, that the boys ripped in right until the 80th minute.’’
Tigers coach Jason Taylor was furious after his team’s fourth successive defeat, saying their ad-lib brand of football “can’t be sustained in the NRL”
“We’ve got to toughen up … that performance isn’t good enough from us,’’ he said.
Searching for their first win since a 20-6 upset in Melbourne in round 24 last season, the Knights led 12-10 after a bruising opening half.
The Tigers drew first blood in the 11th minute when in-form fullback James Tedesco scored his eighth try of the season.
Newcastle hit back in the 20th minute after a bizarre passage of play that started with a Jeremy Smith intercept and ended with a dummy-half pass from Jarrod Mullen to put Akuila Uate over in the corner.
The visitors responded in the 27th minute when winger Jordan Rankin scored out wide and converted his own try. But Newcastle regained the ascendancy four minutes before the interval when Hodkinson dummied his way into the clear and gift-wrapped a try for prop Kobin Sims between the posts.
The home team increased their advantage to 18-10 in the 47th minute, when Mullen grubber kicked into the in-goal and winger Nathan Ross was first to the ball.
Rankin scored his second try of the match and converted from out wide, reducing the deficit to two points with 23 minutes to play.
