Newcastle’s rise from spoon to prelim is remarkable. But the Panthers are the big winners

The winners of the Sunday smash-up in Auckland were undoubtedly Penrith, kicking back and watching next week’s opponents belt each other senseless.

Even though the Warriors were their own worst enemy in the 12-10 loss to the Knights , succumbing to the pressure of the Eden Park occasion and panicking their way to defeat, Newcastle’s rise from wooden spoon to preliminary final is fabulous.

Nobody gets juiced on underdoggery like the Knights. They are the envy of the Tigers, Dragons, Titans and Eels, who remain stuck in the cellar and who, if they’re smart, will study closely everything the Knights have done this year .

It’s difficult to manufacture team spirit, happiness and harmony without winning first, but under Justin Holbrook the Knights have produced the egg without needing the chicken.

Newcastle will be rank outsiders on Sunday – but they were rank outsiders in New Zealand, too.

Not that it was the reason the Warriors lost, but the non-penalty call on Newcastle’s Tyson Frizell in the final minute, when he clearly blocked Warriors kick chasers, shows what a rabbit hole the video officiating system has descended into.

Throughout the match, every bunker call turned into a philosophical discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

To their credit, the bunker officials avoided making absolute howlers.

The absolute howler came when referee Ashley Klein missed Frizell’s infringement, which should have given the Warriors a shot at a penalty goal from right in front and a chance at extra time (in which, the way they were playing, they would surely have lost).

The Warriors had lost their challenge on a fingertip call a few minutes earlier. So, do we want to eliminate technology and go back to crucial on-field refereeing mistakes like this? Clearly not. But the tech-assisted challenge system hasn’t stopped it happening either.

And nobody understands why the bunker can intrude on the game unprompted and correct many referee rulings or take a player out due to a head knock, but not correct a glaring error like this.

Rugby league is a simple game played by simple people, refereed by an overcomplicated Rube Goldberg machine.

When NRL supremo Peter V’landys sits down with his rules officials in the summer, item one has to be unpicking this tangle of wires and knobs.

The end result is what matters, and the end result on Sunday was a shower of bottles and other projectiles raining from the stands onto the referee – just like before we had video technology.