Warriors coach Nathan Brown has doubled down on criticism of the effort his side showed in the second half of their record loss against Melbourne on Monday, suggesting fear of further failure played a part.
In the immediate aftermath of the club's 70-10 demolition at the hands ofthe Storm, Brown gave a blunt assessment of his team's performance, saying he felt that some of his players simply gave up as the Melbourne club began to get on top after a highly competitive first half.
Speaking to media on Wednesday, Brown said that wasn't an opinion he could change after having watched the game back.
"When you're getting the effort areas wrong, that's certainly what you have to look at. I'd like to say that I was wrong, but when you watch it again ..." Brown said.
"Giving up can be done in different ways. Some people get really down on themselves and withdraw from the competition, not because they deliberately do it, but sometimes they feel if they don't put themselves in the situation they can't bugger up anymore. Either way, it's not what we want in a football club and the football club we played are probably the best in that area.
"To be a good club, we need to be like that. It's something we felt we're improving at, but we dropped the ball in the second half the other day and if I didn't say it, I'd be lying to you. It's happened now; we just have to address it and move on."
Dejected Warriors players during the thrashing at the hands of the Storm. Photo / Photosport
The Warriors have historically bounced back well after gigantic losses. After their last record defeat – a 62-6 loss to the Penrith Panthers in 2013 – the club went on a five-game winning streak, while also winning immediately after then-record losses in 2004 and 2008.
This weekend, they meet the struggling Canberra Raiders on Saturday looking to continue that trend.
Despite the loss, Brown has made minimal changes to his side. Outside of replacements for Josh Curran (knee), Dallin Watene-Zelezniak (concussion) and Aaron Pene (suspension), only winger Edward Kosi has been replaced in the run-on side, with Rocco Berry coming into the squad in his place.
While there was no hiding from the result, Brown said he hoped the side would learn from the loss to Melbourne as they looked to get back to winning ways.
"If I'm being honest, we felt as a club we'd just gone down three tries to two to the Roosters and won three games on the bounce before that, so we felt we were heading in the right direction," Brown said.
"We can't go and make mass changes on the back of one half of footy. There were some things that happened in the second half from an effort point of view and some small areas of the game we were extremely disappointed with individuals - they're being made aware of it or will be made aware of it - it's not something we want in our club or something we want to accept, but mass changes all the time is probably not the answer.
"What I hope is, there were some younger players who had some really difficult days, you just want them to learn from it, that's all. You want the experience – obviously it's a bad experience – but you want them to get some good out of it, and some good out of it is, the things they got wrong, understanding what sort of impact it has not only on them but on the team."
