Brisbane Broncos beat Newcastle Knights in NRL round 13 clash at Suncorp Stadium

FOUR words on a small red and blue banner at Suncorp Stadium yesterday posed a question every Newcastle fan wanted answered.

FOUR words on a small red and blue banner at Suncorp Stadium yesterday posed a question every Newcastle fan wanted answered.

It simply read: "Where is the passion?" After a diabolical opening 21 minutes with Brisbane running riot to lead 24-0, you could have thrown in commitment, pride, fight and spirit as well.

The Knights came up empty on all of them.

Their discipline with the footy was poor, their defence shoddy.

GALLERY: BRONCOS V KNIGHTS

For the first quarter of the game, it was men against boys as the more physical Broncos muscled their way through to score four tries in better then a point-a-minute time, with centre Justin Hodges having a day out.

If Wayne Bennett was embarrassed at the effort in his side's loss to Gold Coast last week, no one would have blamed him if he was cowering on the floor of the coaches box in the foetal position as the points piled up.

Newcastle's 71-6 loss to Brisbane in 2007 was under threat.

But rugby league can and does produce some amazing twists and turns. Yesterday was one of the more remarkable ones.

The momentum shifted savagely on a dropped ball from one of Brisbane's best, Ben Hannant, after he was met heavily by Joel Edwards while bringing the ball back from the kick-off.

Minutes later, Danny Buderus burrowed over from dummy half.

It was the start of something special for the visitors. All of a sudden, Brisbane's defence looked every bit as vulnerable as the Knights' had earlier.

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It was 24-12 when Wes Naiqama crossed out wide after 32 minutes before the alarm bells really started ringing in the Broncos camp.

A resurgent Darius Boyd took the first pass off the ruck on his own side of halfway, brushed past Matt Gillett up the middle and then found Buderus backing up on his inside to score under the sticks three minutes later. Suddenly it was 24-18. Incredible.

With an ounce of luck, Newcastle could easily have gone in at 24-all after Jarrod Mullen ran 90m to cross after picking up a ricochet kick from Peter Wallace, but was ruled offside.

How do you comprehend such a 40 minutes?

The Knights had their chances to grab what would have been a remarkable win in the second half.

Boyd, finally showing everyone in Newcastle why he is rated so highly, lost control of the ball over the line when he looked certain to score after 49 minutes before replacement Richie Fa'aoso steamed over under the posts untouched to narrow the gap to two with 20 minutes to play.

There were some very nervous Broncos at that point. But then came the final, decisive twist.

The momentum was still with the Knights when Boyd was brought down 20m from Brisbane's tryline with plenty of tackles up their sleeve.

Chris Houston resented the tackle on his teammate and intervened, conceding a penalty. It was a telling moment.

In the next set, Brisbane skipper Sam Thaiday stormed past a tired Kade Snowden to cross under the posts to give his side a 32-24 lead and it was enough to break the backs of the Knights.
 

BRISBANE 50 (J Hodges 2 G Beale D Copley J Hoffman A McCullough J Reed S Thaiday tries C Parker 8 P Wallace goals) NEWCASTLE 24 (D Buderus 2 R Fa'aoso W Naiqama tries W Naiqama 4 goals) Suncorp Stadium. Referees: Gavin Reynolds, Ashley Klein. Crowd: 26,683.