Cowboys star Johnathan Thurston is confident his side can ride the momentum of a good training week and bounce back this Monday night against the Storm at 1300SMILES Stadium.
The mood in North Queensland earlier this week had been noticeably dour, but spirits were a little higher on Thursday morning after a couple of hit-outs.
Thurston has noticed training go up a notch, resulting in a positive reaction from teammates.
"We've had a couple of sessions already and it's been what we expected, very high intensity. We need that to continue during the week for a tough match against the Storm," Thurston said on Thursday.
Be it a lack of attention to detail or players second-guessing themselves, Green's systems have been lost come game time over the past month, and Thurston puts it down to individuals not being diligent enough.
"It's just individually, not doing your job [defensively]. We have systems in place and three or four breakdowns of those systems, you can't just cover those," he said.
"You can get away with one or two breakdowns but three or four you can't, so we've had a look at a lot of vision and we know where we need to be better and I know the boys are pumped to get out, train hard and make sure we can get those things out into place and execute them."
The crisis of confidence is a cycle North Queensland need to break, with the lack of self-belief resulting in a lack of communication, which is essential in patching up defensive systems.
Thurston's left-edge sidekick Gavin Cooper said earlier in the week that the groups needs to open the communication channels in order to break the cycle.
"We have just got to really be on each other just to keep everyone's enthusiasm levels up and just keep everyone pumped to be in the game, to be in the moment and just to keep fighting for everything we can," Cooper said.
When Thurston was asked what he can do as the team's leader, he simply said it is about the leaders taking charge of the group and setting a tone of energy.
"It's just coming out with energy in our training sessions and certainly the boys feed off that, so the main thing is to make sure everyone's coming out and jumping out of their skin which they have in the first couple of sessions we've had," he said.
"We've been a little bit soft in that [defensive] area, so if we can improve that area the next part of our game will flow."
