St George Illawarra Dragons co-captain Gareth Widdop admits the team cannot be leaking points ahead of the fixture against Wests Tigers at ANZ Stadium, Olympic Park on Sunday.
The Red-and-Whites have been defeated by both the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles (Round 17) and Gold Coast Titans (Round 19) in recent week, with both opponents scoring over thirty points in their wins.
Widdop concedes there is simply no excuse for this noting that the team is aware they need to work on sealing the gaps and identifying the issue quickly in training this week.
“It was very disappointing, especially being at home after putting in a poor performance the week before against the Sea Eagles and wanting to turn things around,” said Widdop.
“We weren’t able to do so and like I said, it is extremely disappointing and we need to be a lot better.
“There were a number of things that hurt us and for the last two weeks we’ve had 30+ points put on us which comes down to your defence and attitude.
“If you’re not defending strongly you’re never going to win games and that’s where it stars so we need to look at ourselves and fix things quickly.
“The frustrating thing at the moment is we’ve been training really well and it’s just not translating on to the field which is the hard thing to take.
“We need to go back and continue working on things we need to fix as we have another big game coming up against the Tigers which is a must win for us.
“Positives from the game against the Titans was watching blokes like Kurt Mann taking his opportunity with both hands and scoring two tries.
“That’s what you need, blokes coming in and taking their opportunities and playing well.
“It was also a good effort by Tyson Frizell as well, especially with him backing up from State of Origin as he played tremendously well and he showed it in his character.”
