Why O’Brien imagined his’stupid’ conviction would defy cruel Knights’ ‘story’ was’stated a few times’
Newcastle Knights coach Adam O’Brien insists he was “always confident” hi
s squad will find their feet as the NRL’s hottest team enters the finals.
The Knights extended their winning streak to nine games with a convincing 32-12 victory over the St George Illawarra Dragons.
Few could have predicted this outcome, especially given that the Knights were as low as 14th on the ladder with nine games remaining.
Even when the walls were closing in on him, O’Brien remained a true believer in his side.
“I’m going to sound stupid here, but I had faith in the playing group,” O’Brien remarked after the game.
“As I’ve said a few times, even when we weren’t winning, we were playing well.”
“We had one game this year where we didn’t play well, and the narrative has been that we’ve been average.”
But the reality is we’ve lost a number of games by two points where we showed a heap of DNA, a heap of fight and spirit. So I was always confident that we could turn it.
“I obviously didn’t think about fifth spot and home semi and all of that. I just knew we had a good team that are capable of putting it against the better teams.”
The nine-game win streak is a remarkable feat especially for star forward Jacob Saifiti.
After all, the 27-year-old was a member of the 2016 side that lost a staggering 18 games in a row to finish dead last.
But having had a chance to taste the ecstasy of a winning streak rather than the agony of a losing streak, Saifiti conceded “it’s a bit surreal.”
“There’s been some tough years there, but a few of us have stuck strong and come out the other side,” Saifiti said.
“We’ve still got a job to do again on Saturday, but I’m excited to have a home semi. It’s my first one, so I’m really excited.”
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‘Didn’t see it coming,’ says O’Brien of the ‘awful’ Knights, but he rejects the’stupid’ Ponga call.
Coach Adam O’Brien was surprised by his team’s “horrible” performance against the Eels, but he has no intentions to “kick them to death” over it.
The Knights were humiliated 43-12, conceding seven tries while missing 44 tackles and allowing 15 linebreaks, 10 of which came in the first half alone.
To be fair, no one predicted Friday’s result after the Knights took the reigning premiers to golden point just two weeks earlier.
And, according to O’Brien, it’s that tight finish in Round 7 and a few others that have taken their toll on the Knights.
“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…
“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.
