Hasler delivers 'guilty' verdict, confirms Foran extension

Manly coach Des Hasler has lamented the way his side allowed the Raiders to dominate possession in a 30-16 loss at 4 Pines Park on Thursday while also confirming veteran five-eighth Kieran Foran has had his contract option activated.

The Sea Eagles signed the returning five-eighth for at least 2021, with an option in the club's favour for 2022 which Hasler confirmed has now been activated.

"We signed him for two years," Hasler deadpanned when asked about the 2011 premiership-winner's status after the loss.

"He's been very good; he offers a lot of experience particularly for our younger guys, he's been playing good footy."

Foran had some excellent touches against Canberra but it wasn't enough to stop the Raiders grinding out a 30-16 win on the back of eight line drop-outs forced.

Hasler said while the weight of possession was a factor, it was down to Manly's ill-discipline in allowing Canberra to boss proceedings.

"It was possession but the disappointing thing about the possession, we can't excuse ourselves, we were poor on our detail around possession," Hasler said.

"We were guilty of a lot of ill-discipline with our defence. We gave up a lot of six-agains. I thought we started quite well, we had the tempo, we had the flow of the game.

"Their kicking game was very good, I think they had about eight restarts which shows you how much they dominated field position through our ill-discipline with the ball.

"It's something we're disappointed with … I'm not going to use stats and numbers as an excuse, we were just poor tonight in those discipline areas and they punished us with field position and rightly so.

"Late in the game we started getting six-agains and we started getting a bit of momentum and scored a couple of quick tries. It was really important we scored first in the second half but even off the kick-off we couldn't get out of our own end. It's disappointing from that aspect when those kinds of things are in your control."