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Jul 27, 2008

Newcastle kept their NRL finals hopes flickering with a 39-12 thrashing of South Sydney at Energy Australia Stadium on Sunday.

The Knights' tightrope to the playoffs continued with an eight-tries-to-two win which took Brian Smith's team to 11th spot on the ladder - but just two points outside the top eight.

In a freeflowing match which took 20 minutes to ignite, Newcastle took the ascendency with Kurt Gidley pulling the strings and keeping the Souths defence guessing.

An Akuila Uate try after 28 minutes was following by an easy Gidley try set up by Danny Buderus soon after.

Nathan Merritt put the Rabbitohs back in it after 30 minutes but the Knights' Chris Houston went over just before the break after a precise pass from Scott Dureau which gave the Knights a 14-6 lead going into the break.

Souths' misery continued four minutes into the second half when Gidley put Cameron Ciraldo over near the uprights to give the home side some breathing space.

The Rabbitohs hit back soon after with Merritt crossing for his second after some great lead-up work from Craig Wing, which closed the gap to 18-12.

But that was as close as Souths got.

Adam McDougall soared high to score after a Dureau crossfield kick before sinking the Rabbitohs when he rampaged over the line with defenders all over him.

The floodgates opened with easy tries to Marvin Karawana and a second to Akuila Uate minutes after a Dureau field goal.

The loss all but extinguished Souths' faint finals hopes.

A relieved Smith said he instructed his troops to keep their foot on the pedal to ensure their was no trademark fightback from the Rabbitohs.

"Souths have a tendency to come back in matches." he said.

Asked about five missed goal attempts, Smith said: "We should have obviously won by a lot more but Kurt Gidley's back flared up during the match which meant we struggled with our kicking.

"We had a great crowd turn up today and the best thing was seeing Adam McDougall scoring one of his vintage tries with blokes hanging off him. It was great stuff."

Souths coach Jason Taylor was an unhappy man after the match.

"The last thing we'd be doing is talking about semi-finals," he said.

"We continued to turn the ball over time and time again. It was mainly early in the tackle counts which really cost us.

"As far as the scoreboard was concerned, we were still in it with 15 minutes to go but our total lack of respect for the ball lost it for us."

Source: AAP