Brown to turn up heat on Knights after Roosters thumping

Newcastle coach Nathan Brown doesn't intend to try to shield his players from the consequences of the 48-10 hiding the Roosters handed to them at the SCG on Saturday afternoon.

The Knights trailed by just two points with 25 minutes remaining, but then conceded six late tries on the way to a 38-point defeat.

"It's not going to be a nice review on Monday, that's for sure," Brown said.

"We're at the stage now – like a lot of sides – we want to be top-eight.

"We've done enough in the early part of the year to put ourselves in the situation we're in. Then we go out there and have that sort of 25-minute window of footy where there has got to be some questions asked of decisions made.

"Will we play a better team than the Roosters in the next month? Probably not but there's going to be some decisions asked of players that are going to be big factors in where we finish on the scoreboard.

"So we certainly can't ignore it."

The Knights stayed with the Roosters for the opening 40 minutes and even blew a couple of try-scoring opportunities.

They trailed 6-4 at the break and 12-10 at the 50-minute mark. A Boyd Cordner try in the 55th minute (for an 18-10 lead) seemed to be turning point – or the point when the Roosters put their foot on the accelerator while the Knights were pushing on the brake.

"At 18-10 I thought this was going to be a really good contest – that's what it looked like to me," Brown said, appearing almost stunned at the capitulation.

"That next little window of what happened is just not we've been about. Even earlier in the year we were losing games – except for that Gold Coast one [a 38-14 loss] – we'd been competing hard and our defence had been rock solid.

"Our right edge might have found themselves a little short at times but they needed to do better than what we did.

"There were certainly some questionable decisions some people made in the back part of that game which is disappointing," Brown said, without elaborating or identifying which players he thought had let themselves and their teammates down.

All will be revealed at Monday's video analysis presumably.