As they enter the final third of the season, Wests Tigers centre Esan Marsters is adamant his side can recapture the defensive resolve and resilience that had them sitting inside the top four and with the best defensive record in the competition ahead of Sunday's clash against the St. George-Illawarra Dragons.
Heading in to the game off the back of four straight defeats and over 100 points conceded in that time, Wests Tigers players know their strong start to the year is well in the rear view mirror now and that any chance of making the 2018 Telstra Premiership finals series starts with a victory on Sunday.
However, there's still a firm belief in the side that, should they find the resolve that was so prominent in the opening rounds of the year, a top eight finish is not beyond Wests Tigers in season 2018.
"I think we probably got a bit ahead of ourselves," Marsters conceded.
"We were worrying about winning games rather than just playing games and we sort of went away from that principle of backing each other. When we played in the first few rounds of the year, we came in to it as underdogs and didn't expect to win so it's important we just go in to the game focussing on the game itself.
"We're thinking too much about our attack and dropping down on those one-percent things, so the big focus for us is on getting our defence right and not worrying about what we do in attack too much.
"We had a pretty big meeting with all the leaders today and we had a chat with where we've gone wrong.
"I think a lot of it comes down to our defence.
"We were criticised a lot at the start of the year about our attack not being good enough, but then it went too far the other way — our attack has gone up but our defence has gone down.
"We touched on that and hopefully we can help that get back on track.
"We were still missing tackles in the opening few rounds, but a lot of that was made up by the fact that people were covering each other and that's what we want to work on again.
"If we can do that at training this week, we know it'll reflect out there on the field."
See what Esan Marsters had to say about this week's game in the video above!
