The humiliation of their 46-4 loss to the Wests Tigers followed by the emotion of Nathan Brown's controversial exit cut deep.

"Probably the toughest time of my career to be honest,"he told the Newcastle Herald. "We'd love to go back in time and change things but we can't. All we could control was our response to it."

The response was Saturday's 38-4 thrashing of cellar-dwellers Gold Coast Titans on Old Boys' Day. The only disappointment for the players was that it came in front of a crowd of just 8,274, the lowest in Newcastle since 1997, with torrential rain and a backlash from two weeks of poor publicity responsible for fans staying away.

The win ended a tumultuous two weeks for the club.

"I just thought ourselves, our Old Boys and especially our fans really deserved that after last week," Barnett said.

The Knights trailed 4-0 early before scoring seven unanswered tries to hand the Titans their 10th straight defeat in a one-sided affair that was as good as over at halftime at 24-4.

Among his side's best in tough times over the past month, Barnett was again outstanding on the right edge, scoring a try and laying on a couple of others while five-eighth Mason Lino, prop David Klemmer, young centre Bradman Best and hooker Connor Watson were also stand-outs.

The tough backrower, who enjoyed a close relationship with Brown, said the squad got caught up in the emotion of the coaching drama but there were no excuses for the Tigers capitulation.

"It's been pretty emotional for everyone but as professional footballers, we should have handled it better," he said.

"Browny's done a lot for me both on and off the field. He showed interest in me when I was in Canberra and gave me my chance and he's really helped me mature off the field and I'll always be indebted to him," Barnett said.

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"But in saying that, I was really stoked with the way Woolfy [interim coach Kristian Woolf] stood up. He wouldn't have wanted it under these circumstances but he rallied us together and said what's done is done and urged us to respond like we did.

"He just told us there are no excuses now and to be honest, I don't think the coaching situation should be an excuse and I don't think it is an excuse for what happened last week.

"We just need to get a bit tougher mentally. Hopefully, this will be a big learning curve for how we handle adversity in the future."

Barnett admitted the fans were a big focus leading into the Gold Coast game.

"They rocked up for two or three years there for a lot of games where they probably knew we weren't going to win to be honest," he said.

"So last week would have hurt them more than most because of what was on the line - it should never have happened.

"To give them the result was great but I'll be disappointed if we don't back it up next week."