Parramatta‘s third-straight loss has cemented its spot on the bottom of the NRL ladder.
A runaway try to Bradman Best in the dying moments sealed Newcastle a 34-26 victory in front of a vocal home crowd.
Both sides had numerous tries disallowed in a roller-coaster match that saw the lead change hands four times throughout the evening.
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The Eels chances took a hit when Blaize Talagi was denied midway through the second half. Talagi looked to have scored in the corner but was denied when the Bunker judged he’d knocked on.
Talagi had planted the ball short of the line and rolled it over the goal line up his forearm.
“No, it’s not,” Panthers great Greg Alexander said in commentary for Fox Sports as the Bunker said the roll constituted a knock-on.
“He just keeps his arm on the ball, never releases an arm, never comes away from it.”
Moments later, cameras caught Mitch Moses attempting to argue the call with referee Peter Gough, who didn’t want a bar of it.
“He doesn’t want to argue because Mitch is probably making a lot of sense,” Alexander said.
Earlier, the Bunker judged a Maika Sivo pass that appeared to go backwards out of the hand and back into the field of play as a knock-on.
“The bunker was involved in a lot of things tonight, and we couldn’t really get one,” Eels coach Trent Barrett said after the match.
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It was the second controversial Bunker call of the evening after Selwyn Cobbo was denied a try against the Warriors in Auckland.
Barrett gave a diplomatic answer when pushed on whether or not he thought the officiating was lacking.
“Yeah, you’ve got to be careful too, it works both ways – sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t, but it seems at the moment we’re on the wrong side of a few,” he said.
“We needed a few to go our way … it’s hard on the players. We’re running out of players, got players out of position, but it’s hard on some individuals.”
The Eels took the lead early and held it until Greg Marzhew scored his second of the evening in the 45th minute.
Back-to-back tries from Talagi and Mitchell Moses – backing up from his man-of-the-match performance in Origin II – put the Eels back in front before Enari Tuala took the advantage back for the Knights.
A Talagi error allowed Bradman Best to run the length of the field in the 73rd minute. A Sivo four-pointer and subsequent conversion kept the Eels in the fight.
The win was secured when Best repeated his earlier effort off the back of another Eels error.