Melbourne played without their superstar centre Greg Inglis, who was stood down after being charged with assault over an incident involving his girlfriend, and they missed him like oxygen.

The game was into its final 20 minutes before the Storm finally got something meaningful going in attack, but, although they rushed on three tries from there, it was too little, too late.

The bounce-back factor is a feared one in this game. How many times have we seen teams that have been struggling suddenly improve dramatically after a change of coach? This was another. Maybe the Knights would have returned to the winning list had Smith remained in charge, but we'll never know. What we do know is that Melbourne aren't the same side without Inglis.

The signs of a Newcastle recovery were there in the third minute, when they pressed hard enough for lock Matt Hilder to get over the line - only to be held up. Melbourne fullback Billy Slater went close to scoring off a grubber kick three minutes later, but that was only a momentary interruption to the charge of the home brigade. Pretty soon, the Knights began turning the pressure into points.

Centre Adam MacDougall put Keith Lulia into the clear and he found halfback Jarrod Mullen inside for the try. Then Mullen put prop Mark Taufua on the outside of Storm five-eighth Brett Finch, and after Finch's grabbing attempt at a tackle failed, Taufua scored. Midway through the first half, the Knights were up 12-0, and Storm second-rower Matt Cross had been helped off injured. Nothing good was happening for the visitors.

Melbourne couldn't afford things to get any worse but, in amazing circumstances, things did get worse when Newcastle scored a wonder try five minutes before half-time. Several times the Storm looked like they had Knights players wrapped up in tackles, but they somehow kept getting passes away. After 12 of those, Hilder got the try he had earlier missed out on.