Less than week after going to hell and back and balancing on the raggedy edge separating an epic, club-defining victory from a soul-crushing defeat, Newcastle will have to saddle up and do it all again.

The Knights' 30-28 extra-time victory over the Raiders on Sunday was less of a football match and more of a life experience. It was the kind of thing that doesn't have winners, just survivors.

If the Novocastrians had cruised to the easy victory many suspected would be coming their way, they'd likely be even money to beat the Warriors on Saturday night, if not favourites.

But now, battered and bruised and missing a couple of stars, it is Newcastle's turn to dig deep and defy the odds.

After 10 straight wins and with the club's first finals win in a decade secured it still feels like anything can be possible for these Knights.

Quite often, the hardest fights are the ones a team doesn't see coming and while the Raiders knocked the Knights around, the other side to that coin is giving Newcastle a battle-hardened edge that could be a weapon when it heads to Auckland.

"The beauty of it is we got a lot of hard lessons but still got the win. If we'd lost we'd still have got the hard lessons but it'd be a six-month wait to show it. We get to fix it right away," veteran centre Dane Gagai said.

"When we get into an arm wrestle with teams we have players who can break a game open, especially with the lad out the back [Kalyn Ponga] but also Braddy [Bradman Best], Greggy [Greg Marzhew], Dom Young, those guys can score from anywhere.

"We just have to make sure we stay in that process, go back and forth with teams, because we're fit enough – we can do it, our defence is strong, especially through the middle and when we put it all together we're a good footy side. We just have to play our footy."

Gagai is the most experienced player at the club when it comes to finals football. He's the last man standing from the club's last play-off run in 2013 and spent plenty of time playing at the business end of the season during his time with South Sydney.

That experience helps him keep things in perspective – the veteran centre had a tough day against the Raiders but knows exactly how both he and his team can bounce back and get closer to the kind of football that transformed Adam O'Brien's side into premiership dark horses.

"The hardest thing for me was after I dropped those balls and seeing how hard our middles were working," Gagai said.

"On the inside I was hurting but I was so proud that all those boys had my back. A lot of what we did out there didn't work for us but that was a show of our character, to be able to get that win.