Knights coach Adam O’Brien didn’t see his side’s “horrible” performance against the Eels coming, but he has no plans to “kick them to death” over it.
The Knights leaked seven tries in a 43-12 humiliation where they missed a staggering 44 tackles and conceded 15 linebreaks — 10 of those alone in the first half.
But to be fair, probably no one saw Friday’s result coming after the Knights took the reigning premiers to golden point just two weeks ago.
And it’s that tight finish in Round 7 along with a handful of others that’s taken a toll on the Knights, according to O’Brien.
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“I didn’t see it coming. It was a horrible performance, let’s be honest, but they haven’t been horrible so I’m not going to kick them to death either,” he said in the post-game press conference.
“I think it’s been a really big month on-field and off-field. There’s some stuff going on that you’d know about then obviously losing ‘Brails’ (Jayden Brailey to an ACL injury).
“They’re going to sound like excuses but I don’t care if they sound like excuses. The team’s been working really hard for a month so there’s that part of me…
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“I didn’t see it but I watched last night’s game (Sharks vs Cowboys) and I thought our last week’s opposition showed the same signs so that tells me it was a pretty hard game up there (in Townsville) last week.
“We’ve had two golden points before that so I’ll give them a bit of an out there.
“We just started, our defence we were quite loose through the middle — that’s a sign. We’ve defending really well this year — we haven’t lost that ability in six days but we’ve lost the will or the gas in the tank clearly.
“We need this bye, it’s been a long campaign.”
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O’Brien said he’ll give his squad an extended break over the bye, but one player that plans on doing extras during that time off is skipper Kalyn Ponga.
Ponga returned from a head knock last week but started off the bench. He played his first game at five-eighth on Friday and had a tough night, missing five tackles and failing to have a real impact on the game.
“I’m probably going to work in the break because I want to be better than what I was tonight,” Ponga said.
“I’ve got to own my performance, I’m obviously disappointed with it.
“My second game back it’s definitely a learning experience (but) I’m not going to let that performance eat me up, I’m going to look at it, learn from it.
“I’ve just moved to six, it’s a journey, it’s an experience and I want to be better. But I’ve got to own my performance and I wasn’t good enough.”
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O’Brien made the call over the summer to shift Ponga to five-eighth despite being a representative fullback.
When asked if had any thoughts about moving Ponga back to No.1 O’Brien said: “He answered pretty well… He played 80 minutes at six for the first time… I’m not stupid.”
The Knights now have a 16-day turnaround, which O’Brien believes help “fill the tanks back up.”
“I think even our harshest critics would agree that we’ve shown a lot more mettle than what we did tonight so certainly there’s one part of me that’s confident we need to fill the tanks back up and we can get the team back on track,” he said.
“Even teams that have been up the top for a long time have a day where things aren’t great and we had one tonight.”
They face the Titans in Round 12 and are likely to get Adam Elliott back from a groin injury.
