Newcastle coach Nathan Brown has promised to wield the axe on his team after bombing yet another lead at home in their crushing NRL loss to the Wests Tigers.

The Knights raced out to a 12-0 advantage against the Tigers on Friday night before conceding five tries to slump to their fourth straight defeat and five in their past six.

It was also the fourth time this year Brown’s men had led at halftime at McDonald Jones Stadium before being overrun by the opposition.

Brown was furious with his team’s defence given it was the launch of the annual Beanie for Brain Cancer round supported by the Mark Hughes foundation.

Hughes, a member of the Knights’ 2001 premiership-winning team, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2013.

“Obviously Cameron Smith had his 400th (game) and Robbie (Farah) has his 300th – they’re outstanding achievements,” Brown said.

“But the mark of a person is someone that does something for others for nothing. That’s what Mark Hughes does.

“There’s certainly some blokes that should hold their head in shame with what they dished up tonight.”

The defeat came less than a week after the Knights defence gave up a season-high 48 points against the Sydney Roosters.

Having resisted the temptation to make wholesale changes, a fed-up Brown has vowed to take a new line-up for next week’s road trip to Manly.

The Knights are currently in eighth spot but are likely to drop out of the top eight by the end of the round pending results for Brisbane and the Warriors.

“Maybe a couple of people thought it was acceptable not to put the right effort in, I’m not sure,” Brown said.

“We haven’t had a lot of changes in the past four to five (games) that have been forced. But there’ll certainly be changes next week that are going to be unforced changes.

“That is 100 per cent guaranteed.”