THE Newcastle Knights will be desperate to avoid a last-round dogfight by beating Gold Coast Titans on Thursday night to clinch a berth in the NRL finals series.
Newcastle head into their penultimate regular-season match, to be played at Sunshine Coast Stadium, outright seventh on the ladder, four points clear of Cronulla, Canberra and Gold Coast.
A win or a draw will be enough for Newcastle to secure a play-off berth for the second consecutive year, but a loss could leave them under enormous pressure against Brisbane at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday week.
If the Knights were to lose tonight, they could potentially have three teams just two points behind them, all of whom boast superior for-and-against statistics, leading into the final round of games.
It's a nerve-racking scenario but Knights coach Adam O'Brien said it was crucial that his players looked no further than their immediate task.
"We're definitely just focusing on this game," O'Brien said.
"I know it's boring, I know it's cliched, but we're still searching for that complete game. We've played really well in patches ... but we're just trying to get that complete game, where our best defensive performance meets our best attacking game."
O'Brien was confident that the Knights, who have now won four games in a row, still had room for improvement.
"We're still capable of more, and I don't think I could have said that last year," he said.
"We were probably red-lining towards the end of the year and the tank was empty. I don't think the tank is anywhere near empty with this team.
"I feel like we can keep getting better. We're running out of time on that, but our training standards haven't wavered, if anything they've increased.
"I'm really confident we can have an impact, if we can get ourselves there. That's our No.1 job."
The Knights will be without senior front-rowers Daniel Saifiti (knee) and David Klemmer (suspended) and O'Brien said it would be "disrespectful" to deny they will both be missed.
But he insisted it's a case of "next man up" and was confident in his engine-room rotation of Jacob Saifiti, Sauaso Sue, Josh King and Jirah Momoisea.
The return of Test back-rower Tyson Frizell from suspension should at least partially balance the ledger.
Newcastle have been trounced 42-16 and 36-6 in their past two clashes with Gold Coast.
Last year's loss to the Titans in the last round of the season proved particularly costly, as it meant the Knights placed seventh in the finals instead of sixth, denying them home-ground advantage.
