Newcastle have kept their finals hopes alive with a 34-18 defeat of Wests Tigers that featured a four-try haul from rookie winger Fletcher Sharpe.
The Knights' attack looked as good at home on Sunday as at any point in a clunky 2024 season, with Tyson Gamble's kicking game effective, Adam Elliott a linchpin in the middle and Kalyn Ponga lurking in the right place all afternoon.
Sharpe was the major beneficiary, becoming the ninth Knight to score four or more tries in a game when he crossed on the back of a Dane Gagai line break midway through the second half.
"He's a footy player, isn't he?" Knights coach Adam O'Brien said of Sharpe.
"I'm proud of him, he has a bit of pace out wide, can finish off some stuff that these guys are doing.
"He's tough, he's everything that we want to be."
The 10th-placed Knights are now only two points out of the top eight but need to triumph in all of their remaining four games to finish the regular season with a winning record.
"We needed to win and we won," O'Brien said.
"We'll enjoy tonight then we'll start preparing for the Sharks (next Sunday) tomorrow afternoon."
Boosting the for-and-against must also be a top priority for the Knights, whose -89 is considerably worse than any current top-eight side's points differential.
The Tigers moved closer to a third consecutive wooden spoon with their loss and given their own points differential, likely need two wins from their final three games to leapfrog 16th Parramatta.
That's not out of the question despite a dire first season under Benji Marshall, since the Tigers meet the Eels and 15th-placed South Sydney during their run home.
It remains to be seen whether Aidan Sezer will be available for the Tigers though, after the veteran halfback injured his left knee in a collision with Ponga and came off the field during the second half.
"I don't think it's any structural damage but a bit of bone bruising," Marshall said.
The Tigers went toe-to-toe with Newcastle in the first half but were dealt a major blow when Sharpe scored one of the tries of the season to confirm his hat-trick on the stroke of half-time.
Ponga fumbled the ball around the halfway line but managed to avoid a knock-on by flailing a boot out and kicking to Sharpe's right edge.
Sharpe barely managed to keep the ball in play as he kicked past Jahream Bula on the half-volley and then chased through to put the Knights in place for a 10-point half-time lead.
A cut-out pass from Ponga had helped Sharpe to his second try, with Gamble's pinpoint kick yielding his first.
Teenaged five-eighth Lachlan Galvin was the Tigers' most dangerous player in the fight to remain in the contest after half-time, helping Bula over the tryline with a towering bomb.
But it was to be the Tigers' only four-pointer of the second half.
"It's been the story of our season where we do some good things and then we do other things where we shoot ourselves in the foot," Marshall said.
"Defensively today, we just weren't good enough."
