Penrith 18 Newcastle 30

PENRITH coach Matthew Elliott took responsibility for his team's loss last night, saying there must have been something amiss with the preparation.

Newcastle took a hammering in the penalty count, conceding the first five and 10 of the first 11 before it eventually finished 10-4 in favour of the Panthers. Kurt Gidley, well, he just took the game at CUA Stadium by the scruff of the neck and made it his own.

Sitting at home in Newcastle watching the television coverage of his team's against-the-odds win was injured Knights captain Danny Buderus, who, like everyone else who saw it, could only marvel at Gidley's virtuoso performance in the hybrid role of dummy-half in attack and fullback in defence. Gidley was captain for the night, as well, after the original stand-in leader for Buderus - second-rower Steve Simpson - was ruled out injured.

"Kurt has taken his body and his mind to a whole new level as a result of his Origin experience," Buderus said. "He had a blinder in the third game and he has come back to Newcastle and it is as if he has said to the rest of the guys here: 'Come with me, boys'. But he has done it with his actions, rather than his words. He's an action type of leader and I think NSW would be silly not to consider him as captain in the future."

Having said that, Buderus then went back to watching what was a delayed coverage of the game. But he already knew the result. You don't think he could have waited to find out, do you? That is what it is like in this competition - particularly for that bunch of teams fighting for the last few positions in the top eight. Newcastle needed a win like oxygen - and they got it in extraordinary circumstances.

The run of penalties against them - starting with four in the first eight minutes - could have had the same effect on Newcastle as the hail of bullets did on Bonnie and Clyde, had the Knights let it. But they didn't. They were down 8-1 in the penalties at half-time, but were level-pegging at 12-12 on the scoreboard. They conceded the first two penalties of the second half, but picked up the last three. At the same time as they finally got a few whistles in a row their way, they fittingly ran away with the game.

Afterwards, Newcastle coach Brian Smith began by saying he proposed not to answer any questions that included a three-letter word that started with 'r' and ended with 'f'. But after discussing everything else that had happened in the game in-between, he finished by saying that while the penalties against the Knights could probably be justified, he thought Newcastle could have been awarded a few more for similar offences by the Panthers.

"I'm not suggesting any bias or anything like that," Smith said. "I just think the balance of how they were viewed went against us. There - I finished up talking about it and I didn't want to."

It takes a lot of courage and commitment to win when you are constantly getting turned around by penalties, so it was no surprise to hear Smith describe the win as Newcastle's gutsiest since he took over as coach last season. Elliott, on the other hand, was left to wonder why. Why the Panthers had been so poor, especially coming off a strong win on the road against Parramatta last Sunday.

The turnaround for this game had been short and there had also been the drama surrounding their prop and captain Petero Civoniceva to consider. Civoniceva had been racially abused by a spectator at Parramatta Stadium and it had been hot news for most of the week, which could have been a distraction for the side. But Elliott wasn't using either of those things as an excuse.

Trying to explain the loss at home against a team that was missing three top-shelf players in Buderus, Simpson and injured prop Ben Cross, Elliott said: "I think, in this comp, when your attitude is down you put yourself in the position to be outnumbered and outplayed and outsmarted," he said.

"We played nowhere near what we practised to do, and as a coach I've got to accept responsibility. Something in our preparation wasn't right."

NEWCASTLE 30 (C Houston 2, K Gidley, C Bailey, D Tolar tries; Gidley 5 goals) bt PENRITH 18 (T Waterhouse 2, B Tighe tries; L Coote 3 goals) at CUA Stadium. Referee: G Badger. Crowd: 10,029.