Newcastle coach Adam O'Brien ripped his "distracted" team after their hammering to the Bulldogs on Friday night, calling for his players to switch off social media.
The Knights looked a step off the pace coming off the bye, with their four-game win streak came to a crashing end as they did themselves no favours with their error-riddled performance.
The late sin-binning of Jacob Saifiti for a deliberate headbutt on Reed Mahoney also played a role in the margin blowing out to 30 points, but O'Brien refused to look into the particulars of the match, rather sending his team a pointed message about their use of social media use in the lead up.
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"It's been a long time since we've had a performance like that, that's gonna take some getting over.
"We probably need to batten the hatches down, get off social media, and don't read too much of what you guys (journalists) are going to write.
"Maybe we were reading too much of that leading up to this one about how good we were going. Now we'll look inward and try to fix it.
"There were some guys there that clearly looked like they were distracted in their performances," he added. "We lacked a bit of creativity on the ball. That looked like a team that had had a week off."
While O'Brien was stern in his assessment, the coach admitted his players did show effort, but like every NRL game, that alone is not enough.
"I think there was plenty of effort, no doubt. But effort on its own is not going to win you the game. I do think the first 20 minutes we did a hell of a job defensively keeping them down their own end.
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"We had a couple of tries disallowed, they got a couple against the run of play. I think that really deflated us, frustrated us, and we never overcame it."
O'Brien was also asked about rookie fullback David Armstrong's mistake-riddled game, with the No.1 caught out of position more than once, while racking up a couple of handling errors from dropped kicks.
Armstrong has had fruitful start to his NRL career in place of the injured Kalyn Ponga during the club's four-game win streak, with the Roosters reportedly interested in luring him to Sydney's East.
Newcastle has already offered Armstrong a contract extension to stave off the Tri-Colours overtures, according to O'Brien, and he told reporters, all the noise surrounding the 23-year-old may have impacted him mentally.
"He's only a young bloke. He's been in four games, he's been getting plenty of pats on the back. It's all new to him.
"There's all the speculation, contracts and management and all that. He's young, he'll learn from it."
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