The Knights lost 20-18 against the Sharks in sodden conditions on Friday night, despite scoring outscoring the home side four tries to three.<\/p>\n
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An ever-philosophical Holbrook was quick to praise Ponga, who in recent weeks has been huge for both the Maroons and for Newcastle during consecutive losses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a really good footy side here and poor Kalyn \u2013 that\u2019s three games in nine days. That\u2019s a lot to ask of anybody, let alone your best player,\u201d Holbrook said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor him to get himself up to play tonight and for us to come here and outscore them, you\u2019re probably unlucky to win the game. I thought we did enough. It\u2019s hard to swallow because we expect a lot of our team now.\u201d<\/p>\n
McInnes & Fitz praise Sharks’ fight! | 05:53<\/p>\n
Despite a huge workload, Ponga was again highly influential for the Knights in the top eight clash, offering safety under the highball, as well as plenty of danger in attack. The 28-year-old finished the game with one try, 13 runs for 130 metres, six tackle breaks and one line break.<\/p>\n
The skipper was unperturbed about his kicking – despite a regular conversion rate of about 76 per cent for Newcastle. <\/p>\n
\u201cI feel pretty good. We lost and that makes things worse but it\u2019s more of a mental thing, getting up for a game after Origin and the five-day turnaround. It\u2019s all mental, physically you\u2019ve just got to make sure you get everything right and I\u2019ve got enough support from staff and everyone around me to get everything right. But I\u2019m fine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Now in his 11th season in the NRL, Ponga is well accustomed to putting in the minutes and has been worth his weight in gold for Newcastle when healthy this year.<\/p>\n
He shook off any concerns about his workload in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone is different on recovery. I think getting your recovery right and getting away from the game \u2013 I know that sounds weird \u2013 but getting away from the game and freshening you up is sort of what I try and do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Katoa flies over for the Sharks! | 00:29<\/p>\n
Holbrook was left to rue what could have been as his side slipped to seventh on the NRL ladder. But there were green shoots from the Knights according to their coach, especially since it was just the sixth game this year that Newcastle has started with their preferred spine \u2013 and in a match where Sandon Smith didn\u2019t take the field due to limited interchanges.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re confident we\u2019d play well and get the win but we weren\u2019t and we\u2019ve got to stick at it. There\u2019s still a lot of games to go but it\u2019s hard to take at the moment,\u201d Holbrook said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m frustrated at the moment and I was last week. That\u2019s up to me to handle. You want to win, and I think we created enough chances to do that. That\u2019s why it\u2019s disappointing, if we\u2019d come here and got beat convincingly you can\u2019t get frustrated by that. But we\u2019re doing enough to get there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get on with it. There\u2019s a lot of belief in this team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thankfully for Ponga and his Knights teammates, the NRL calendar is slightly more favourable in timings in the weeks ahead. <\/p>\n
Newcastle have a week to recover ahead of their Round 21 match against the Roosters (Friday July 24, 6pm) and a further eight-day turnaround before their Round 22 match against Brisbane (Saturday August 1, 7.35pm).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newcastle coach Justin Holbrook has given high praise to skipper Kalyn Ponga for his commitment to the Knights,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-806158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}