North Sydney Bears Coach Shane Millard was impressed with his side's effort last weekend against the Mount Pritchard Mounties but knows his side needs to be fully committed to an 80-minute performance if they are to continuously improve.
Going down 22-18 on the Central Coast, the Bears did exceptionally well to get back into the match after trailing 18-0 after just 20 minutes.
The North Sydney side came within touching distance of causing another upset but fell just short but Millard was well aware of where the match was lost.
"They're a great bunch of blokes, that play right until the end that's for sure," said Millard.
"But until we work out that we can't give 18 point starts away in the first half, it's going to be a pretty hard slog."
While the Bears produced a brilliant come from behind win the week prior, against the competition leaders the Western Suburb Magpies, Millard doesn't want his side to be constantly playing catch up football.
"We got away with it last week against the competition leaders and this week again we had some opportunities to sneak away with it in the end," Millard explained.
"My theory at the moment is we just tip our toe in the first half and see how hard it is, how hard they're going to run and how hard we need to tackle.
"But then before you know it we're down 18-0 and then in the second half we've worked it out and they know we need to be here, here and here in those areas and they get out there and do that and give themselves a chance.
"But we had some poor decision in the back ends of sets and in the back end of the game but hopefully we can they learn from this and get better for our next match."
Heading into their next match against the Newcastle Knights Millard is confident his young side have learnt a lot from their last two games and will be able to produce the performance they need to bag the two competition points.
