Knights hold out Storm in Hunter scrap

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Newcastle Knights v Melbourne Storm

Newcastle have held out Melbourne with a 14-12 win at McDonald Jones Stadium today, despite being kept scoreless after halftime.

The Knights went into today's game, looking down the barrel of a 0-3 start to the season - and the pressure was on not to let the home crowd down. Melbourne travelled north with a team missing some key players from the spine, as well as a couple of big boppers in the middle.

The game was a battle of field position as Cogger and Pezet traded kicks to advantage their teams better. It was an arm wrestle until about the 15-minute mark when Kalyn Ponga started to get involved in the plays, opening up some space on their left for Kai Pearce-Paul.

A rib injury to Reimis Smith around the 20-minute mark caused a big shift for Melbourne position-wise. Kane Bradley shifted into the centres, and the Knights started to take more aim with him playing an unfamiliar spot. A quick shift by the Knights down their right side and the strength of Dane Gagai were too much as he took on three Strom players to open up the scoring for the day. 

There was a change in the air of McDonald Jones Stadium, and the crowd lifted a notch, and the Knights started to feed off it. With the Storm still trying to come to terms with Smith out of the play, Ponga made a skilful attack and sent a rocket of a pass to left-side winger Enari Tuala, who went over with ease for the Knights's second try. 

With the Storm trying to turn things around on the field, errors started to creep into their game as desperation set in to get some points. With a late attack down the Storm's right side, Will Warbrick's desperate tackle yielded a Knights penalty for stripping the ball. With that, Ponga kept his kicking record for the day and got the points for the penalty. 

The Storm launched another attack at the end of the half at the Knights' line, only to make more handling errors. An error from Phoenix Crossland gave the Storm the ball back around the 47-minute mark, and they soon capitalised, putting a high ball up for Xavier Coates, who tapped it back to a willing Papenhuyzen, who got the 4 points at the 49-minute mark.

The next 20 minutes was an arm wrestle again for field position, with each team making handling errors and diffusing any gains made by either side. But it was Tyran Wishart who found the Knights' defence lacking with a late attack to walk over and get the try. Nick Meaney's boot was keeping the Storm in the game, and the margin was now back to 2 points with 3 minutes to go.  

The Storm were unable to relive the heroics that saw them score 12 points in 3 minutes last round, and even more undermanned than when they started. The Knights' defence helped them, and there was a Storm attack around the 60-minute mark that saw Tyson Frizell stand up and push the Storm attack back. 

It was a fairly vanilla game from the Storm and the Knights. Only when Ponga attacked the line did the Storm get rattled, and this set the platform for the Knights to score points. The Storm were good through the middle but failed to capitalise too much, which meant the outside backs had to come in if they wanted anything. Any attacks that did were shut down by the Knights forwards.