The Newcastle Knights will look to keep their bid for a top-four finish on track when they host the desperate Sea Eagles on Saturday afternoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The match is Newcastle’s final game at McDonald Jones Stadium before the finals, with Justin Holbrook’s men eager to keep in touch with the top four.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Knights have won three in a row, with Kalyn Ponga recreating the form that saw him claim the Dally M Medal in 2023 and leading his side on a remarkable rise from wooden spoon to premiership contender.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Standing in their way on Saturday is a Manly side desperate to keep their slim finals hopes alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Sea Eagles’ top-eight chances have faded amid a six-game losing streak and now sit 10th, six points outside the eight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Manly must win their final three games and hope other results go their way to play finals, a quest that starts in Newcastle on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Team News<\/p>\n
Knights: Centre Bradman Best returns after two games out with a calf injury and fills the hole left by Dane Gagai (hamstring). Prop Jacob Saifiti is also back after six games out with a hamstring injury so Cody Hopwood slides to the bench. Veteran Tyson Frizell starts in place of Francis Manuleleua, who will miss this week due to the late onset of concussion symptoms.<\/p>\n
Sea Eagles: A massive in for Manly with gun fullback Tom Trbojevic returning after three games out with a hamstring injury. Clayton Faulalo has been shifted to five-eighth in place of Joey Walsh, who suffered a hairline fracture in his jaw during last Friday\u2019s loss to the Dolphins. Back-rower Ben Trbojevic (concussion) is good to go so Corey Waddell moves to the bench. Prop Caleb Navale will come off the bench in his first NRL game of the year having returned from an ACL injury through NSW Cup last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stat Attack<\/p>\n
The Knights have won three of their last four games against the Sea Eagles.
\nThe Sea Eagles have conceded 150 points in their last four games.
\nKnights winger Dominic Young has scored 10 tries in his last six games against the Sea Eagles.
\nSea Eagles second-rower Haumole Olakau\u2019atu has scored six tries in his last seven games against the Knights.
\nKnights five-eighth Fletcher Sharpe has scored five tries in his last three games.<\/p>\n
Stats supplied by David Middleton, League Information Services,\u00a0author of the\u00a0official annual of the NRL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Newcastle Knights will look to keep their bid for a top-four finish on track when they host…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-859823","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\/859823","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=859823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}