IF YOU have seen Any Given Sunday, the movie in which Al Pacino stars as an NFL coach who is trying to hold his losing team together and get them to rally for one last effort, you would know what Newcastle coach Brian Smith was talking about when he said there were "just inches in it" when it came to deciding the result of yesterday's game.

Smith didn't launch into anything like the Pacino character's high-intensity dressing-room speech - but you knew what he meant.

If Roosters prop Mark O'Meley, who tackled Knights second-rower Cory Paterson just short of the line in the 73rd minute had lost hold of Paterson's leg, as often happens in those circumstances, it would have been OK for Paterson to reach out and force the ball. But, somehow O'Meley held on, and Paterson, who couldn't resist the tryline, was correctly judged by video referee Tim Mander to have been guilty of a double movement.

If Roosters winger Shaun Kenny-Dowall's knee had touched the dead-ball line a split second ahead of his forcing the ball for a try off a bomb in the 46th minute, instead of a split-second after, the Roosters may not have edged out the home side by two points.

And if a Newcastle player had made it to the ball first after it came loose in the Roosters in-goal from a bomb in the final seconds of the game, instead of Roosters halfback Mitchell Pearce forcing it, then the previous 79 minutes and 50 seconds wouldn't have mattered, because the game would have been won by the Knights.

Smith hates losing as much as anyone, but he took yesterday's loss reasonably well, because the Knights had shown they could end up in the finals if their luck holds. "Someone once told me that using the word frustrating is a bit negative," he said.

"I don't think there was too much negative about us today, except that we didn't get the two points. A couple of errors hurt us and we could have executed a bit better, but we're still in a position where, if we find some improvement, we can make it into the top eight."

Defeat is something Newcastle captain Danny Buderus normally finds excruciatingly hard as well, but he, too, was coping.

"It was like we were just a little bit off doing exactly what we needed to do at times," he said.

Roosters coach Brad Fittler thought the Paterson no-try was the right decision, although he had some expert help to reassure him.

"I had a bloke next to me who was a real footy head and he told me the exact rule," Fittler said. "So I knew that, if they stuck to the rule, it was a double movement."