"So I have to be a good boy," Smith said. So he turned to a rather good metaphor to explain how the whistle of the referee, Tony De Las Heras, had knee-capped the Knights within 20 minutes of kick-off.
"It is the equivalent of running a 5000-metre race, but someone tells you you've got to do the first two laps at 800m or 400 pace," Smith said, once he was out of Annesley's eye-line. "It's all very well to say it is only 5km, no matter how you run it, but if you are subjected to the circumstances we were today, for our boys to regather themselves at 14-0 down and get to 14-12, I thought it was tremendous. But that eventually took its toll on us at the back end of the game."
The Knights, with a chunky enough pack, but one still dwarfed by the sizable Warriors forwards, had planned to control the opening spell. Instead, De Las Heras did, doling out six straight Warriors penalties, three of them against Knights prop Jesse Royal, who didn't display the discipline imbued in him by his six-year stint in the New Zealand Army.
Smith said that by the time the Knights had their third feel of the football, the Warriors had had 13 turns with it. The Warriors, rightly, turned that possession into a 14-0 lead, and while that advantage was cut to two points at half-time, they had plenty of extra energy in the second half.
De Las Heras, understandably, had several conversations with Knights skipper Danny Buderus as the penalty count grew, and Buderus approached again at half-time - but only to pose a technical query about his interpretation of the marker rule at the play-the-ball.
Buderus said he's trying to be more civil to referees this year. "It's been a real conscious effort on my behalf," he explained. "I've been thinking about it over the off-season and I don't want to be seen as a hot-headed captain."
The Knights hooker was already hampered by a corked thigh suffered very early in the game, yet still handled three times in a flowing move as the Knights tried to save the game.
Then he was held just short of the line by four desperate Warriors in the 65th minute when they trailed by just six points. How close? "Yeah, pretty close," admitted Warriors hooker Nathan Fien. On the next play, Patrick Ah Van scooped up Scott Dureau's kick through and, underlining the subtle shifts of fate, halfback Dureau injured himself in a futile dive to try to undo his mistake and halt Ah Van as he reached the halfway line.
He missed and Ah Van went clear to put the Warriors into an unassailable 26-16 lead.
"Things change so quickly. That could've been us, we could've been in the winning dressing room," Buderus lamented.
Dureau may have cracked a rib, putting himself in more doubt than Buderus for the game against the Broncos next Sunday. Five-eighth Jarrod Mullen, meanwhile, heard a snap in his calf and limped off before the hour.
