Newcastle Knights' Best too good for Canberra Raiders

His return sparked the Knights to a 34-24 victory over the Canberra Raiders at Lang Park on Sunday.

It meant the Green Machine missed the perfect opportunity to climb back into the NRL top eight, with errors and the inability to defend them proving costly.

They also lost centre Sebastian Kris to a head knock at half-time, while Josh Papalii, Elliott Whitehead and Sia Soliola were all put on report - the first two for a crusher tackle on Hymel Hunt, the latter for a high tackle on Kalyn Ponga.

This game finally went ahead almost 24 hours after it was first scheduled, after the Queensland government put Brisbane and the Gold Coast into a three-day lockdown on Saturday.

The delay didn't work for the Raiders, who were slow out of the blocks and found themselves behind from the start.

They also found themselves against a Best-inspired Newcastle.

The 19-year-old scored a try and set up two more in his first game back since round 14 from an ankle injury.

Newcastle's left edge tore Canberra apart, with winger Enari Tuala scoring a hat-trick and Ponga also looking dangerous every time they went there.

It put a dampener on Raiders co-captain going past NRL legend Johnathan Thurston to outright third on the all-time points-scorers list, with just Cameron Smith and Hazem El Masri now ahead of him.

As well as Sam Williams' 100^th game for the Raiders.

But it looked like the Knights who had everything to play for, with Tuala scoring his first with a brilliant individual effort.

And then Best was through some slack Canberra defence to make it two tries inside the opening 10 minutes.

Both the Saifiti brothers were immense for the Knights - Jacob (145 metres) and Daniel (131m).

Raiders fullback Jordan Rapana (193m) again tried his heart out and finished the game with a cut above and below his left eye.

The Knights were lucky not to have a player sent to the sin bin in the 14^th minute when second-rower Tyson Frizell tackled Whitehead without the ball with the tryline beckoning.

"Definite sin bin ... this is a bad call. Frizell is tackling him and has him by the shorts before he receives that footy in a try-scoring position," Braith Anasta said on Fox Sports.

"It's a sin bin every day of the week. It's straight off. They dodged a bullet there Newcastle."

But Raiders coach Ricky Stuart wasn't interested in any excuses - they started poorly and that was that.

"I don't want to use that. We weren't good enough today," Stuart said.

"I'm not going to look at certain parts of the game or interpretations, rulings. We just weren't good enough.

"We didn't start the game well. We've got to work ourselves out before we worry about anything else.

"We had a number of individuals who weren't as good as they have been and they've got to look at the reasons why."

But from there it could've been a different game.

Instead Newcastle went further ahead when Kurt Mann outjumped Croker.

Raiders winger Harley Smith-Shields dove into the corner to get them on the board, but Tuala scored his second to make it 22-6 at half-time.

Papalii crashed over to give the Raiders the perfect start to the second half, but when Tuala completed his hat-trick and then Ponga scored off the back of a scrum it was all over.

Hudson Young and Emre Guler both scored consolation tries in the final 10 minutes, but the Raiders need to bounce back against St George Illawarra to keep their finals dreams alive.

AT A GLANCE

NEWCASTLE KNIGHTS 34 (Enari Tuala 3, Bradman Best, Kurt Mann, Kalyn Ponga tries; Jake Clifford 5 goals) bt CANBERRA RAIDERS 24 (Harley Smith-Shields, Josh Papalii, Hudson Young, Emre Guler tries; Jarrod Croker 4 goals) at Lang Park. Referee: Adam Gee.