Knights coach Adam O’Brien criticised his players before turning the blowtorch on himself and taking responsibility for their 44-6 thumping against the Sea Eagles on Sunday.
Newcastle were without Origin stars Kalyn Ponga, Bradman Best and Dane Gagai and it showed as they got shredded from start to finish at Brookvale Oval.
O’Brien said his side “got what we deserved” after they were exposed in defence while barely firing a shot in attack.
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“It was a hard one to watch and a hard one to be a part of, I’m in it with them,” O’Brien said.
“Manly played well, they exposed our inexperience on edges but the most disappointing thing is I felt we dipped our toe right from the start.
“The inexperienced doesn’t help but I don’t think us as a whole helped the young blokes out there.
“I know we’re going to lose games… but it’s how we lose them… normally we’re in the fight.
“You’d have to go back to 2023 to look at some really disappointing games. I don’t believe that’s who we are anymore but that’s where we were tonight and we need to fix it.”
O’Brien also took responsibility and said he got the Knights’ preparation wrong heading into Round 19.
“It’s not all on the players, it’s me too,” he said.
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“I trained us a little bit lighter this week thinking it was a hard game in Canberra (last week) and we’re not that team just yet.
“We need to make sure we train steely every week so it transfers into our game.
“So it’s not just the players, I got some stuff wrong too.
“There were some signs of fatigue in our game last week and I get it, it’s rugby league, everyone is going to be fatigued, but you’ve got a responsibility as footy coaches and performance staff to monitor the loads.
“All the long ball-in-play games, we’ve been involved in 6/7 of them. So the guys have been working really hard and showing that grit, so I just felt I’d lighten the week up a little but I just think we started that way and that’s on me, not the players, and I’ll fix it this week.”
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The Knights now sit 10th on the ladder and skipper Tyson Frizell said they must learn from the poor showing and bounce back to play finals.
“If we’re being honest, the whole game was pretty poor,” Frizell said.
“It’s disappointing because we’ve been building quite nicely throughout the year and haven’t had a performance like that… we need to get our learnings from this week, we can’t just wipe it under the carpet.”
Source Agencies
