The Raiders will face their toughest clash of the season so far when they face Parramatta Eels on Saturday, but they’re learning from last week's mistakes and are ready to apply the pressure to the competition ladder leaders.
Captain Jarrod Croker said, “there’s a couple of little areas we definitely need to work on. If we take a few more of the opportunities that present, it’ll be a different story.
“I had an opportunity [last week], Rapa had two in the corner, if we nail one of them then we might get the momentum rolling and see the snowball effect that we see so often in games now,
“With the new six again rule and the fast play the balls, you can get a roll on and put a couple of quick tries on.”
The Raiders will be aiming to bring back the same momentum that saw them undefeated in the opening three rounds of the competition, but Croker knows it won’t come easy.
“We’re taking on the competition leaders, they’ve been the benchmark this year, it’s a massive challenge," said Croker.
The Eels attack has been a crucial element in securing the top spot on the ladder. They lead the competition in offloads, with a total of 100 under their belt, something that Elliott Whitehead said the Raiders will be looking to avoid.
“[Reagan] Campbell-Gillard and Junior [Paulo] love their offloads, they’ve been great this year. That’ll be a big focus for us, to make sure we stop that second phase of play. Hopefully, we can do that and play a little bit ourselves” said Whitehead.
Papalii: Eels have number one pack in comp
Whitehead says the Raiders will also be working on reducing their error count after they made a total of 15 errors last weekend, which proved costly in getting the win. He believes this needs to change before Saturday's match.
“We made too many errors to give us a chance in the game [against Manly].
"Parramatta have been in good form, so it’s going to be a tough game.
"We need to learn a lot from last week's game. There were little errors around the ruck, we’re better than that and that’s something we’ll be looking to fix this week,” said Whitehead.
