Eels coach Brad Arthur was disappointed with the way his team was unable to defend its line in the second half but is confident the lessons learned in a 32-18 loss to the premiers will stand them in good stead.
"We came here tonight looking for an opportunity and we gave ourselves a real good opportunity with 20 minutes to go," Arthur said.
The Eels went toe-to-toe with the premiership heavyweights for 65 minutes before conceding the final three tries to record a loss by a score that did not reflect the tightness of the contest.
"If we want to mix it with the really good teams we have to be harder with our defence on the tryline," he added.
"We turned over a heap of possession at times with silly errors… We can't allow soft tries at the tryline.
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"The tries were soft in the second half… Some of the tries they scored weren't good enough."
Both Daniel Alvaro in the first half and Blake Ferguson in the second came up with soft errors straight after points.
"It's not great turning the ball over in our red zone out of points," Arthur admitted.
"It's one set of six tackles we have to defend.
"The pleasing thing for me is the attitude was great, there's plenty of belief because they believe they can get the job done under pressure."
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Asked if some of the 2018 habits had crept back in towards the end of the game, Arthur was blunt.
"We're a different team than last year," he said.
"When you put yourself on the tryline for repeated sets the chance of the opposition scoring increases… at the end of the day the tries were soft, we had to work hard for ours and we scored some good ones.
"I'd like to think our boys will walk away from here knowing if we can improve a couple of areas of our game and have more resolve on the line we can win plenty of games going forward."