They opened their campaign with an explosive performance and 18-point win, but Newcastle are nowhere near their peak potential.
That's the opinion of Knights coach Ron Griffiths, who has challenged his players to keep their foot on the gas when they face Gold Coast Titans on Sunday.
Newcastle claimed a 32-14 win over Brisbane at home last week, the club's first victory after a winless inaugural campaign earlier this year.
The display, punctuated by teenage halfback Jesse Southwell's impressive debut, drew plenty of acclaim and left some pundits talking up Newcastle's title chances.
But Griffiths, in his first year as coach, said while the first-up win was a solid start, his side could not afford to "get ahead of ourselves".
Despite scoring six tries and producing a high-energy display, he said the players still had plenty to work on.
"There were some things in the will area of the game that were really special, and we'd been working on those all preseason," he said.
"But there were a couple of little effort areas there that we thought we need to be better if we want to challenge teams at the back end of the year or we want to put a Newcastle-way performance out there each week."
Griffiths, who has lost co-captain Hannah Southwell to a season-ending knee injury, is confident the team will iron out the kinks in their performance.
"It was a little bit of fatigue but we also need to understand we need to have a tough mindset," he said.
"If we're tired, we've got to be able to get through that period. We can put it down to fatigue or our first run together, but at the end of the day we can't make excuses. Our players understand our game plan, it's very simple - it's based around the effort areas. We'll expect those to improve again on Sunday."
The Titans lost their first game 26-12 to the Dragons.
An expansion club like Newcastle and Parramatta last season, the Titans re-signed two-thirds of their squad after finishing third in their inaugural campaign.
They only signed eight new players for this season compared to the Knights who recruited twice that.
The only team with a female coach in former Australian captain Karyn Murphy, Griffiths said the Titans had to be respected given their experience.
"If you look through their squad, there's probably four of them that are around 30 years of age and have played at the top level," he said.
"When you're playing against players like that - when times are tough and things aren't going well - they're the players you can rely on to be composed in really gritty situations.
"They've got some youth to go along with those players.
"No doubt it's going to be a tough affair up there."
Newcastle back-rower Makenzie Weale will make her NRLW debut from the bench. The 20-year-old has played in the Queensland state competition for West Brisbane Panthers.
Fellow Queenslander Simone Karpani starts at lock to replace Hannah Southwell. The 25-year-old has a sister Asoiva, who plays for rugby union for Australia.
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