Newcastle halfback Tyrone Roberts has scored a brace of tries to lift the Knights to a 24-18 win over Wests Tigers, giving caretaker coach Danny Buderus his first win of the season since taking over from Rick Stone.

Roberts sealed the Knights’ win with just more than a minute remaining when he twisted his way through the Tigers’ defence to plant the ball down out wide in a seven-try thriller.

Newcastle, who were last on the ladder going into the match, have drawn level with a bunch of teams, including the Tigers on 18 points with three rounds of the regular season remaining.

The Knights spent the bulk of the game trailing and only hit the lead for the first time when Tyler Randall scored on 46 minutes.

The Tigers’ loss was compounded by a knee injury to prop Aaron Woods who was forced off the ground early in the first half.

Coach Jason Taylor’s side went into the halftime break leading 16-12 after an exciting opening 40 minutes.

The Tigers blasted out to a 10-0 lead after nine minutes with tries to wingers David Nofoaluma and Pat Richards.

Newcastle hit back soon after on the back of a penalty when Akuila Uate was on the end of a right-edge shift.

The home side produced the play of the opening half when Mitchell Moses got the ball on the right edge before he grubber kicked inside to a flying James Tedesco to score a converted try to make it 16-6.

Newcastle made the most of back-to-back penalties seven minutes before the break when halfback Roberts touched down after an in-goal bat back from Tariq Sims off a Kurt Gidley cross-field kick.

Beau Scott came up with a huge play on the stroke of halftime when he somehow held up a rampaging Ava Seumanufagai over the line.