Newcastle have scored 20 points in the final 25 minutes to come from behind and beat the Gold Coast 30-24 at McDonald Jones Stadium.

With Mitchell Pearce back in the Knights’ line-up for the past two weeks after missing the middle part of the NRL season with a pectoral injury, the Knights claimed back-to-back wins for just the fourth time since the start of 2016.

After the Titans led 24-10 early in the second half on Saturday, the match swung when Gold Coast five-eighth AJ Brimson was downed with a serious head knock.

Play was stopped for three minutes after he got himself in an awkward position while attempting to tackle Newcastle’s Lachlan Fitzgibbon, and he was taken from the field for a head injury assessment.

Fitzgibbon was the beneficiary after play resumed as he ran onto a Danny Levi ball out of dummy-half to cross and narrow the margin to 10.

Mitch Barnett repeated the dosage moments later, again crossing from first-receiver in the 60th minute to bring the Knights back within two before they kicked a penalty goal.

Shaun Kenny-Dowall then gave the Knights an unlikely lead when Connor Watson went down the short side and turned the ball back inside to his centre to cross with eight minutes to play.

The Knights held on to claim the win, moving them up to 18 competition points and level with 10th-placed Canberra but only behind on for-and-against.

They would, however, require a minor miracle to have any hope of playing finals football.

The Titans appeared to have control of the match after Mitch Rein dominated the tempo either side of halftime.

After coming off the bench in the 30th minute with scores locked at 4-4, he got a flick pass away for Nathan Peats before Moeaki Fotuaika dived on a loose ball to score.

After the Knights got it back to 12-10 at halftime, Rein was again influential in creating space for Phillip Sami to score on the left wing before Anthony Don crossed in the next set on the right to make it 24-10 before Newcastle kicked into gear.