Newcastle Knights coach Nathan Brown was left to rue the opening 20 minutes of his side's 40-14 loss to the Melbourne Storm on Friday night at AAMI Park.
While the home side had an almost flawless start - completing each of their first 16 sets - the Knights wasted the few chances they had as the Storm skipped away to an 18-0 lead.
"They [Storm] got a real fast start and a try, and made some good momentum," Brown said.
"That obviously took a lot of juice out of us. To come in [at halftime] at 18-8 at three tries to two, considering what we weathered, I thought it was a pretty good effort to get to that stage.
"They got a repeat set and maintained that possession again on us. We got a bloke [Lachlan Fitzgibbon] sent to the bin. That was the game in a nutshell."
Match: Storm v Knights
Round 6 -
home Team
Storm
5th Position
away Team
Knights
10th Position
Venue: AAMI Park, Melbourne
The Knights are still testing combinations - the likes of Kalyn Ponga and Brock Lamb are still finding their feet at NRL level - and Brown believes his side can learn from their performance.
"At the moment, I suppose, we are a developing team in a lot of ways and developing combinations," he said.
"The biggest thing for us is our resilience in defence. They held us up four or five times over the line.
"We made plenty of line breaks and caused them plenty of trouble. I know Bellyache's [Storm coach Craig Bellamy] been critical of their performances lately, but they've had three tries scored against them in the last two weeks."
"From an offensive point of view, I felt we really stretched them a lot. Their ability to be able to scramble and hold us up, as opposed to ours - that's a huge lesson.
"We need to get some resilience in that area - and when we do tend to defend very well, we seem to get enough points to win games."
Knights captain Mitchell Pearce is keen to get the back on track.
"I wouldn't say it was a step back - as a performance it was - but it's a good chance for us to go back to the drawing board and work on other parts of our game," he said.
Knights press conference - Round 6
