Match Details
Match Date	19th May, 2013
Opponent	Newcastle
Result	Loss 8-44
Coach	Des Hasler
Captain	Michael Ennis
Venue	Newcastle (Hunter Stadium)
Crowd	18,982
Referee	Gavin Morris Jason Robinson

Pretenders one week, contenders the next. How else do you sum up the Knights after they thumped 2012 runners-up Canterbury-Bankstown 44-8 at Hunter Stadium yesterday, just one week after conceding 44 unanswered points in a 44-14 surrender to the Raiders at Canberra Stadium?

‘‘We were just ‘on’. That’s the difference. We were on,’’ Knights coach Wayne Bennett said.

‘‘When you’re on, everything good goes your way and the bad stuff you can recover from and get it right. What happened to Canterbury today happened to us last week in Canberra – it was just reversed today.’’

Scoring seven tries to one in their most complete performance this year, the win moved the Knights to 12 points and fourth position ahead of Manly on points difference, though the Sea Eagles have a game in hand against the Storm at AAMI Park tonight.

Apart from having a crack at referees Jason Robinson and Gavin Morris for blowing 20 penalties – the count was 11-9 to the Bulldogs – Canterbury coach Des Hasler described Newcastle’s performance as almost perfect.

‘‘First of all, you’ve got to congratulate Newcastle, coming off the back of what they came off last week, and I think they almost pulled off a near-perfect game of football,’’ Hasler said. ‘‘I think they completed about 95 per cent of their sets – about 35 of 38 overall, and about 19 of 21 in the second half – so they were very controlled, and very ‘on’ for the game today. For us, it was the other end of the scale.’’

‘‘We were certainly looking for a lot better than what we played in the last two weeks,’’ Bennett said. ‘‘We needed to come here today and play well, and they’ve done that, otherwise our season would have been under a fair bit of pressure.

‘‘That was probably the best we’ve played as a pack. Those key players are missing but these guys, they’ve got it, but they’ve just got to dig a bit deep sometimes to find it.’’

Mason engaged in a second-half war of words with Bulldogs fullback Ben Barba, suspecting the reigning Dally M Medallist had twisted Knights winger James McManus’s legs in a 57th minute tackle, but replays showed Bulldogs centre Krisnan Inu was the alleged offender.

‘‘I thought it was Benny Barba, it was a misunderstanding and I said sorry after the game,’’ Mason told Triple M after the match.

‘‘It was a foul act. Imagine if Jimmy did his knee or something? And that was what I said to Benny, as his leg was around his head, and he could done have a medial or an ACL.’’

Barba said Mason apologised after the game ‘‘but I didn’t want to back down’’.

‘‘That’s ‘Mase’ just firing up,’’ Barba said.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

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