A penalty to Souths as full-time sounded left the final tally at 5-4 in the visitors' favour, continuing a trend that has haunted Newcastle all season. In the lead-up to yesterday's game, the Knights vowed to improve their on-field discipline after a week of controversy surrounding their relationship with the NRL's referees.

Smith was pleased that his team's "squeaky-clean" approach had significantly reduced its penalty toll but was far from satisfied with the performance of whistle-blower Ben Cummins.

"I can't believe that we've won the game by 39-12 and we still haven't won the penalty count," Smith said. "We were all over them [Souths] like a rash, a bubonic plague-type rash. It's unbelievable.

"From my point of view, we got no favours again today.

"There were some calls that did go our way, but other calls … when we've been dominated by our opponents, we expect the penalties to go against us. That's just a given.

"But we still couldn't get them today, and more credit to our boys for keeping their cool and not getting frustrated."

Smith described knock-on calls against Kurt Gidley and Scott Dureau as "diabolical" and said that both incidents "in any man's language, were clearly knock-backs".

The coach also said he found two decisions by video referee Steve Clark hard to believe: first a no-try ruling after it seemed Knights centre Junior Sau had scored, and then a benefit-of-the-doubt try to Adam MacDougall when a positive verdict appeared a formality.

Smith was nonetheless optimistic his team had made substantial progress.

In their previous two games, the Knights had conceded 11 and 10 penalties against Cronulla and Penrith respectively, so yesterday represented a 50 per cent reduction.

"To be fair, we only conceded five penalties and you can't expect to concede too many less than that," Smith said. "I thought our boys made a real effort with their discipline, and I know from talking to them that they actually enjoyed working with the referee today, instead of that feeling that they're getting a tough deal. The boys responded well, in a professional way. We need to keep that happening. That's up to us."

An unexpected bonus for Smith and his troops was that Newcastle have handed the dubious tag of the NRL's most-penalised team to Manly.

Manly conceded 10 penalties yesterday in their loss to the Roosters, taking the Sea Eagles to 139 for the season, four more than the Knights.

Newcastle, however, remain outright last in terms of penalties earned this year.

Their tally of 96 is eight fewer than their nearest rivals, the Roosters.

Newcastle's ongoing woes with the game's law enforcers prompted chief executive Steve Burraston to speak out last weekend, after Cronulla beat the Knights 16-13 thanks largely to two second-half penalty goals.

"I think referees have a pre-conceived idea that we're an undisciplined club and we give a lot of penalties away, and they look for every minor thing that they can possibly penalise us on," Burraston said.

His comments cost Newcastle a $5000 fine for questioning the integrity and impartiality of referees.

Newcastle have won the penalty count only twice in 18 games this season, and even 23,182 fans - their biggest crowd this season - were unable to sway the ledger in their favour yesterday. Yesterday's comprehensive result, however, added weight to the theory Smith floated last week in his Newcastle Herald column: "I see the Knights as being like a young challenger taking on a heavyweight boxing champion.

"We have to accept that it will be hard to get the judges' decision and win on points. But nobody can argue if we land a knockout punch."

South Sydney were simply no match when the Knights started throwing haymakers.