{"id":9538,"date":"2025-07-20T23:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T23:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/9538\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T23:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T23:41:08","slug":"obrien-reveals-knights-could-have-forfeited-after-virus-nrl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/9538\/","title":{"rendered":"O’Brien reveals Knights could have forfeited after virus – NRL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newcastle Knights<\/a> head coach Adam O’Brien<\/a> has revealed his side could have forfeited Sunday afternoon’s clash against the New Zealand Warriors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was revealed in the 24 hours leading into kick-off for the final game of Round 20 that Newcastle’s squad had been swept by a virus.<\/p>\n

As many as 12 players were in doubt for the game, with a majority of the squad unable to eat, and kept in bed despite preparing for the game against the New Zealand Warriors<\/a>, which they would eventually fall short in due to a last-minute try for opposition second-rower Leka Halasima<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was revealed on the Fox Sports broadcast that assistant coach and former Knight Kurt Gidley<\/a> had brought his boots to the ground.<\/p>\n

The dire situation saw a majority of the Newcastle side take to the field without eating, with O’Brien admitting he had to rewrite his team sheet on multiple occasions, and that forfeiting the game was even an option.<\/p>\n

“Really proud of the playing group considering what they’ve been through in the last 48 hours, we had 12 of them in bed over the last 24 hours,” O’Brien said during his post-match press conference.<\/p>\n

“For them to turn up today and put in that type of effort, I couldn’t be any prouder of them.<\/p>\n

“You think about losing in golden point, but that one there was different again. It’s a hard one to take.<\/p>\n

“It was a busy morning on the phone to docs and staff running around trying to get medicine and food, trying to get some guys to eat.<\/p>\n

“The vast majority didn’t get to eat before kick off, they couldn’t hold it in. So it chopped and changed, I wrote the team sheet out about four times this morning.<\/p>\n

“We would have had to forfeit if a fair few of them couldn’t take the field.”<\/p>\n

The gutsy performance from the Knights, seemingly against a Warriors side who lacked in effort areas, saw them in the lead following a shaky Jack Cogger<\/a> field goal towards the end of the game.<\/p>\n

Despite Tanah Boyd<\/a> missing a shot at field goal and a penalty goal, a late final attempt at field goal, which was charged down, saw Halasima wind up scoring out wide to secure a Warriors’ win.<\/p>\n

O’Brien said his side has things to work on, but was also disappointed in some of the refereeing calls during the second half.<\/p>\n

“There’s some stuff there we have to own as well. We bombed two or three in the first half. We aren’t shying away from that,” he said.<\/p>\n

“They proved costly the ones we bombed, but there was some stuff there that was hard to take in the second half.”<\/p>\n

The Knights clash with the Canberra Raiders<\/a> next weekend, then have a bye before heading into the final weeks of the regular season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newcastle Knights head coach Adam O’Brien has revealed his side could have forfeited Sunday afternoon’s clash against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-9538","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\/9538","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=9538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}