Nathan Ross

It has been a long time coming for their fans but after 19 successive defeats, their fortunes have changed for one week at least as they surprised the Gold Coast Titans with a 36-24 win.

The see-sawing game had a bit of everything and in the end, a Titans error led to the Knights putting the icing on the cake for a victory.

The Titans loss was exacerbated by potentially serious injuries to trio Anthony Don, Jarryd Hayne and Tyrone Roberts. In the end, they were left with just one fit player on the bench.

Titans coach Neil Henry provided a breakdown of what the injuries were and how it looked for those players injured.

“We’re not real good… we’ve got two with dislocated shoulders and quite a serious ankle injury,” Henry said.

“I don’t know any prognosis but you can safely say none of those three will play next week, and it could be a lot longer, we will just wait and see.

“Jarryd’s hurt his ankle quite bad, there’s a lot of swelling there so we will have to wait until we get a bit of a scan and see what’s happened.

Whilst the Titans dug deep to the end with just 14 men and only one on the bench, it is at the crucial times that coach Neil Henry believes his side can improve.

“It was a brave performance but in the end it’s not two points. We need to be able to get our decisions right when we can still control it. Our execution let us down a little bit,” Henry said.

“We needed possession and I thought we turned it over with a couple of attempted offloads and a couple of kicks out on the full.

“That’s four sets of possession that we needed and given that our middle men played big minutes and quite a few guys were out of position due to our injuries.”

The early momentum was with the Knights as they scored several opening tries on the trot. The Titans hit back and held the lead at numerous points including late on when Taylor’s pinpoint kick found centre Konrad Hurrell.

The late Knights tries to Peter Mata’utia and Nathan Ross kick-started the Knights season with a home win.

Knights coach Nathan Brown could not have been more pleased with his side’s win and performance to end the drought.

“I’m really happy for everyone, from the fans to the players,” Brown said.

“We had a lot of old boys there today, I would like to think it had a good effect.

“It’s quite evident that winning hasn’t been something that’s been around for a while with the young kids.

“We started well, led 12-nil and were well on top like last week. ”

He made note of his side’s belief to come-from-behind and win.

“To fall behind and then come back and get to the front and then when we did, close the game obviously really well compared to the same situation last week… A fair bit of that’s got to do with belief and about actually knowing how to get over the line,” he added.

Player of the Game:

3. Nathan Ross

2. Brock Lamb

  1. Konrad Hurrell

“It feels good for everyone to have a win.”

Knights 34 (Nathan Ross 2, Brendan Elliot, Jack Stockwell,  Sam Stone, Peter Mata’utia tries; Trent Hodkinson 5 goals) def. Titans 26 (Konrad Hurrell 2, Karl Lawton, Tyronne Roberts-Davis, Joe Greenwood tries; Ash Taylor 3 goals) at McDonald Jones Stadium. Half-time: Titans 16-12. Crowd: 12,869.

By ricky

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