Star Terry Campese rated the 38-18 win over Newcastle as superior to the previous week's record 74-14 lapping of Penrith, the Raiders overcoming attempts to slow them down and five-eighth Campese shrugging off a heavy targeting from Knights defenders.

Newcastle's finals prospects are now on life-support with yesterday's margin adding only to their agony as they crashed out of the eight.

But Henry raised eyebrows at the post match media conference by saying of Cummins it might be difficult for him to come home and referee saying "I don't think he's ever handled that well."

And while stressing he was not accusing Cummins of bias, Henry last night told The Daily Telegraph the club's supporters deserved to have the issue raised: "I think it needs to be," Henry said. We had 12,200 supporters out here and 8000 of them were Raiders supporters that would agree."

"You only had to listen to the response he got coming off the field. That might be a response for both sides, to the standard. He's doing his best. If we've got a few things where we need points of clarification, we'll do that.

"We'd earned a penalty count in our favour and in the second half it reversed a bit. I think it finished 10-8. It had been substantially in our favour."

Asked if he had heard what Henry had said at the press conference, Cummins said: "Yes, I don't want to get into it."

Henry's comments will create controversy around referees' appointments over the rest of Canberra's campaign, even though he was careful not to break NRL rules by saying Cummins went into matches with pre-conceived ideas.

Knights coach Brian Smith was also less-than-complimentary: "That particular referee we've had today has come up in many of our conversations (with the NRL)," he said.

"Not just in our games - I've observed him refereeing other teams and strings of penalties and weeks ago it was an 11-1 count at Shark Park."

"The whole thing (today) was a muddle, it wasn't a game of footy. It was hard to understand some of the things that happened."