North Queensland Cowboys coach Paul Green says his team needs to stop believing their own hype after their disappointing 30-14 loss to Melbourne Storm at AAMI Park on Thursday night.
The Cowboys have now lost two of their first three games in the 2018 Telstra Premiership with Green accusing his side of being complacent.
"[They need to] stop reading some headlines for starters and just have a more consistent effort in the little areas, the tough areas of the game," he said.
"Defence is the first area for that. We're just conceding too many easy tries and easy points at the moment.
"It's very disappointing. We weren't anywhere near consistent enough in our effort and at the moment, the last two weeks in particular, we're getting beaten in effort areas. Not on skill or talent, we're just hoping for an easy ride at the moment."
Match: Storm v Cowboys
Round 3 -
home Team
Storm
4th Position
away Team
Cowboys
12th Position
Venue: AAMI Park, Melbourne
The Cowboys completed 76 percent of their sets but missed a whopping 38 tackles. Green said that wasn't up to club standards.
"It disappoints me, because I know we are better than that. Until we are prepared to work hard for it, it's not going to happen for us," he said.
"Two weeks in a row. We didn't really learn our lesson from last week [loss to Brisbane] on how to play good consistent footy in the NRL."
Green said it was now up to the players to respond through performance.
"We knew we had to be better than we were last week as well, we just didn't get a reaction from it."
In some encouraging news, Michael Morgan came through unscathed in his return from two weeks out with an abdominal injury.
"It's good to see him get through a game," Green said. "Coming off an injury, that's always the first tick I suppose. He had some good touches."
