Newcastle scored their first win under coach Nathan Brown – and ended a 231-day winless run – with a gripping 18-16 triumph over Wests Tigers at Hunter Stadium on Sunday.
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Wests Tigers fail juggling act
Wests Tigers fans are fuming after a second football caused a mistake that led to a Newcastle try.
After four losses and a draw from their first five games, last season's wooden spooners were able to hang on for a win that prompted jubilant scenes in the crowd of 21,653.
The win lifted the Knights off the bottom of the ladder and was the Tigers' fourth straight defeat.
Searching for their first win since a 20-6 upset in Melbourne in round 24 last season, the Knights led 12-10 after a bruising opening half.
The Tigers drew first blood in the 11th minute when they kept the ball alive and five-eighth Mitchell Moses created enough room for in-form fullback James Tedesco to score his eighth try of the season.
Newcastle hit back in the 20th minute after a bizarre passage of play that started with a Jeremy Smith intercept and ended with a dummy-half pass from Jarrod Mullen to put Akuila Uate over in the corner. Knights halfback Trent Hodkinson converted from touch.
The visitors responded in the 27th minute when winger Jordan Rankin scored out wide and converted his own try.
But Newcastle regained the ascendancy four minutes before the interval when Hodkinson dummied his way into the clear and gift-wrapped a try for prop Kobin Sims between the posts.
The home team increased their advantage to 18-10 in the 47th minute when Mullen grubber kicked into the in-goal and winger Nathan Ross was first to the ball.
There was a controversial and unprecedented incident in the lead-up to Ross' try when Rankin dropped a bomb in his in-goal, after Sims kicked a stray second ball that was on the field in his direction, as the match ball was descending.
Despite protestations from the Tigers that Rankin had been unfairly distracted, the referees ruled Rankin had knocked on in-goal and had to re-start play with a goal-line dropout.Â
Ross scored from the ensuing set of tackles and, from the touchline, Hodkinson landed his 16th consecutive goal since joining Newcastle at the start of the season.
Rankin recovered from that to score his second try of the match after the Tigers exploited a left-edge overlap. He then converted from out wide, reducing the deficit to two points.  Â
The Knights came within two metres of sealing the win in the 72nd minute, when Ross was bundled into touch diving for the corner.
Uate was then denied a four-pointer in the 77th minute after a knock-on by Sims in the lead-up.