Newcastle Knights head coach Adam O'Brien has taken aim at the NRL bunker over the decision to sin bin James Schiller, while also hitting back at a journalist's question.
Schiller was sin-binned during the Newcastle Knights' loss to the Cronulla Sharks on Sunday afternoon, after being ruled to have hit Mawene Hiroti high in the act of scoring.
"(Hiroti) was lowering in the act of trying to score a try, I don't know what (Schiller) is meant to do, just let him score the try?" O'Brien said during his post-match press conference.
"But I don't want to come in here and whinge about that stuff. I don't want to see Teig (Wilton) in trouble (for breaking Tyson Frizell's nose in a tackle), it's footy, it's rugby league.
"I certainly didn't think it warranted 10, but I'm just going to lay off that. It hurt (the result), of course."
The loss for Newcastle was their fourth in a row, with the club struggling in attack over the last month.
They had scored just one try in their last 160 minutes prior to the Cronulla contest, and two of their three tries against the Sharks came at the back-end of the game when the result was already well in hand.
O'Brien though bristled at a question which suggested the loss was similar to the one they faced against the Wests Tigers last weekend, claiming the 'effort' was there.
"[That's] too harsh. A ton of effort went into tonight," O'Brien said.
"Last week was riddled with play one errors, and clearly there were a lot of errors today, but we've got a team (working hard).
"Our depth is being tested at the moment, we've got five injuries, but that's not the problem, every team has injuries, but the issue is it's five in the same position, they're all forwards, so that takes its toll.
"I'm disappointed, we always want to win and I especially hate losing here (at home), but I don't feel like we've let anyone down in terms of how hard we're trying, so yeah I reckon you're being too harsh."
The loss leaves the Knights with just two wins from their six games to date, in the bottom four, and with the worst attack in the competition, having only scored 60 points at 10 per game to date.
