Thurston's 200th game overshadowed by big-scoring Knights Knights 34 Cowboys 6 Knights coach Wayne Bennett and stand-in skipper Chris Houston agreed the confidence gained from defending their line for the opening 15 minutes was the catalyst to Newcastle's remarkable 34-6 victory over North Queensland at Hunter Stadium last night. Playing without injured captain Kurt Gidley, pack leader Willie Mason and back-line strike weapons Dane Gagai and Timana Tahu, the Knights conceded just one try despite being starved of possession during that period, and responded with 34 unanswered points to snap a three-game losing streak to the visiting Cowboys. Unhappy ending: Johnathan Thurston. The six-tries-to-one thumping came after the Knights had trounced Wests Tigers 42-10 in Newcastle a fortnight earlier, making their 32-0 loss to the Sea Eagles at Brookvale Oval sandwiched between those performances seem even more inexplicable. Filling in for Gidley, who was a game-day withdrawal due to calf soreness, back-up halfback Tyrone Roberts sparked Newcastle's recovery with a classic try from a show-and-go rival playmaker Johnathan Thurston would have been proud of. Staking a claim for permanent occupancy of the No.7 jersey, Roberts had a hand in two others, kicked five goals from seven attempts, and he and Jarrod Mullen overshadowed Thurston in his 200th NRL game. Bennett said he was not confident about how the Knights would respond to their Manly mauling, but breathed a lot easier when he saw how desperately they defended the errors they made and penalties they conceded in the opening exchanges. "We played under a fair bit of pressure we put ourselves under ... but after that we were good," Bennett said. It gave me a lot [of confidence]. They're very good at attack and they were on our try-line there for a number of sets - nine minutes roughly - and when you see that [defence], you know they're on, then it's a matter of how it pans out after that. Despite the late changes to the team, which included forwards David Fa'alogo and Korbin Sims making impressive Knights debuts off the bench, Houston said Bennett helped the Knights pick up the pieces after the Sea Eagles shut them out nine days ago. It starts at your training. You get your confidence knocked around a bit in the game but Wayne did a good job just building our confidence back at our training sessions and making sure we're right to go by the next week," Houston said. I suppose if you start well, you get a bit of confidence out of that and it carries through the game. In another injury blow, back-rower Beau Scott hobbled off in the 33rd minute with a recurrence of a groin problem that required off-season surgery, but veteran hooker Danny Buderus made a successful return from pre-season back surgery. Buderus finished the game with his head bandaged but he sparked the team from dummy-half when he replaced Neville Costigan in the 22nd minute. "He helped me out with the leadership out there, and Jeremy Smith and Darius [Boyd] really stepped up tonight and made my job a lot easier," Houston said. We were defending pretty well. We did some silly things that gave them field position, but we were defending pretty well and got a bit of confidence out of that. Then we ended up holding the ball and put the pressure back on them. Gavin Cooper stretched out to score for the Cowboys in the ninth minute but that was all they had to show for their early glut of possession. Roberts dashed over in the 19th minute, and he and Mullen combined to create tries for Aku Uate in the 26th and makeshift centre Alex McKinnon in the 29th to give the Knights a 14-6 lead at half-time. Roberts kicked a penalty goal in the 55th minute to stretch Newcastle's lead to 10 points and the Cowboys never held the ball long enough to stage a fightback. James McManus trailed a Roberts grubber to touch down in the 60th minute, Mullen's cross-field bomb created a second try for Uate in the 68th, and the same combination laid on a try for Boyd in the 75th. Thurston said the Cowboys looked more like "pretenders" than the title contenders they were billed as during pre-season predictions, and coach Neil Henry said the Knights "out-enthused" his side. "We were eight from eight [completed sets] early in the game and we looked OK, and they hung in," Henry said. We got over the line there when Gavin Cooper scored but they hung in, then when we had to hang in the game and they got possession, we couldn't do it - we couldn't match them there - so it was a bit of a lesson in enthusiasm, I think. There was some dropped ball but there were also some poor decisions ... When they were marching up the field, we were struggling to contain them. We were pushing the envelope there 50-50 and we copped a few penalties, and that was a reflection of our inability to stop them getting up the field and we were just hanging on there. After conceding 66 points to the Storm and Knights in successive losses, Thurston said the Cowboys had to stop the rot against the Warriors in Auckland next Monday. It was pretty embarrassing. Defensively we were just really poor," Thurston said. Right across the board, we just had no punch in our 'D' and no punch in our offence. Like Neil said, they were just rolling through us and we struggled to stop them. On the back of our last two performances, you would say we're pretenders at the moment. Like I said, it's pretty embarrassing - 60-odd points in the last two games - so we really need to pull our finger out, that's for sure. NEWCASTLE 34 (A Uate 2 D Boyd A McKinnon J McManus T Roberts tries T Roberts 5 goals) bt NORTH QUEENSLAND 6 (G Cooper try J Thurston goal) at Hunter Stadium. Referee: Gavin Morris, Jason Robinson. Crowd: 15,758.