Positive signs despite winning ugly as blue and gold march on

Parramatta coach Brad Arthur was pleased with the side's resolve for a consecutive week after allowing the Dragons to stay within reach across the 80 minutes in their 12-4 win on Sunday.

The Eels backed up last week's defensive efforts against the Warriors to hold out a Dragons outfit late in the contest, who threw plenty of attacking shape at Arthur's men.

In a season of inconsistency around their defence, Parramatta remained well entrenched in the top-eight ahead of next week's clash against the Knights at Bankwest Stadium.

It was only their fourth away win of the season but it pushes the blue-and-gold four competition points clear of the Sharks on the ladder with five rounds remaining.

"We're learning to win different ways," Arthur said.

"We can't always win by two or three tries so we've had to learn to win at any cost and find a way to win and I thought we did tonight.

"We've had our struggles away from home and I thought our start was really good. We put a real emphasis around our start. Our big boys were good through the middle early."

Parramatta looked in cruise control in the opening half to lay on two tries for a   10-0 lead but errors and cohesion went out in the window in the second, the side's defence though staying firm.

"We've still got plenty to work on, we came out in the second half and turned over too much possession where we need to build more pressure around that," Arthur said.

"We put ourselves under pressure but at least our response was good. It hasn't been great in the past when we've been under pressure. We had to dig in and we did. The desperation was good on the try line and everyone worked hard for each other."

The Eels had their own concerns to come out of the eight-point result with Manu Ma'u (crusher) and Kane Evans (high contact) placed on report in tackles that could come under scrutiny from the match review committee on Monday.

"I just thought he tackled him hard," Arthur said of Evans' effort on Blake Lawrie, which saw him sin-binned with two minutes remaining.

"I haven't had a chance to look at the replay. There wasn't much in it. The boys are playing a tough sport and he tackled him hard."

Arthur added Nathan Brown picked up an ankle injury before fulltime but it was not considered serious.