South Newcastle coach Andrew Ryan lamented his side's ill-discipline but was pleased to bounce back from consecutive losses with a 22-20 win over Lakes on Sunday.
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The Lions, coming off defeats to The Entrance and Maitland in recent weeks, started strongly against the Seagulls to lead 8-0 early at Townson Oval but in both halves invited the visitors back into the contest.
The topsy-turvy affair ended up going down to the wire after Lakes scored with two minutes remaining.
The grandstand finish came as both side's halfbacks were sin-binned late in the game for separate incidents.
Souths took an 18-8 lead shortly after half-time, when it was 8-all, but Lakes just kept coming.
The Potts brothers, Ryan and Blake, combined midway through the second half off a Danny Peck break to complete a 50-metre play with Ryan scoring next to the goal posts.
Souths then lost No.7 Jarom Hains for a lifting tackle in the 67th minute but it proved little advantage for the Seagulls when Jack Kelly was binned a few minutes later for high contact.
Lakes had conceded back to back penalties when Kelly was marched and Souths soon broke through via winger Jacob Afflick to make it 22-14.
The Seagulls' late try made for an exciting end but they couldn't get into scoring range in the final minutes.
"It was a pretty tough game to watch to be honest, both teams would be filthy," Ryan said.
"It was just errors and discipline [issues].
"We need to really work on our discipline because we are giving away way too many penalties every week.
"There was some patches there of OK footy for us, but realistically when we got a couple of lucky tries we probably should have went on with it.
"But we just invited them back into the game."
Elsewhere on Sunday, The Entrance beat Northern 32-10 at Nelson Bay and Maitland smashed Central 44-6 at St John Oval.
On Saturday, Cessnock overcame a 10-point half-time deficit to beat Macquarie 40-30 at Toronto.
Winger Honeti Tuha finished with a hat-trick to remain the league's top try-scorer. He has bagged 10 in five appearances.
Cessnock are unbeaten in five games and host defending premiers Maitland next week. Kurri suffered their fifth consecutive loss, beaten 26-6 by Wests at home.
LADDER: Cessnock, Maitland, Wyong (10 pts); Macquarie, Wests, The Entrance (6); Lakes, Central, Souths (4), Northern, Kurri (0).
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