Canberra Raiders coach Ricky Stuart was lost for words after his side's poor form was put on display in another heavy defeat at Campbelltown Sports Stadium.
The Raiders remained detached from the contest in the opening minutes against a powerful Wests Tigers outfit, gifting the home side easy points with dropped balls, incomplete sets, and errors in the ruck.
By half time, the Raiders were down 18-2, with a late penalty putting the visitors on the board. However, the scoreline could have been far greater had the Tigers not been disallowed a try by the Bunker in the opening 40.
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AS IT HAPPENED: NRL Sunday – Raiders v Tigers
The second half saw little change from the Raiders, with the Tigers recording the first two after the break before Danny Levi found an opening.
When asked how he would sum up the team's performance against Benji Marshall's Tigers, Stuart replied: "I can't."
Stuart's men piled on the points during Alex Seyfarth's absence as the Tigers prop served 10 minutes in the sin bin, but the effort was not enough to impress the star coach.
"I don't see that as any type of praise," Stuart said.
"If we can't score tries against 12 men, we're in a bad position.
"I just said the same thing to the boys in (the sheds), 'Don't get too excited about the fact we scored a couple of tries in the back end, the game was over'. They took their foot off the intensity and they (the Tigers) only had 12 men.
"Tough teams pull it back … I'll leave it with them but I'm certainly not coming in here to make any excuses."
The 57-year-old declared the lack of "toughness" within his side as the reason for the club's recent slow starts and losing streak.
"We're not a tough football team at the moment," he said.
"We've got too many individual choices at the moment and they are taking soft options."
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Exiting the press conference on his own terms, Stuart stated that he "could be" making several changes come next week against the Storm.
Canberra skipper Elliott Whitehead echoed his coach's opinion.
"At the moment we are just not being tough. We go out there and dish that rubbish up," Whitehead said.
"We're going to have to fix that up internally. We didn't want to finish our sets… once a team gets momentum in this league they become too hard to stop.
"The Tigers played well in that first half and we didn't give ourselves any help by turning the ball over where we didn't want to.
"We're going to fix it up together. We aren't going to point fingers at each other, we will fix it together. We've got a big task coming up in Melbourne next week."
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