Last-tackle problem continues to dog Canterbury

An inability to pressure opposition with effective last-tackle plays remains a concern for Canterbury coach Trent Barrett.

His side fought hard in a 28-16 loss to Wests Tigers on Sunday but too often handed cheap ball back to their opponents by getting tackled on the last or delivering ineffectual kicks.

"We let ourselves down on last plays," Barrett said.

"We've had trouble all year defending last plays and also icing our own last plays when we've got the ball. That's an area of concern for us."

Even outside that, basic errors particularly early in the second half cruelled the teams' chances of making the Tigers sweat on the result.

"The errors that we're making, schoolboy errors, whether it's concentration or lack of, and the ill-disciplined ones, they're the things we can control, that's the stuff that annoys me," he said.

"We're not making teams earn too much because we're handing them a lot of possession.

"We had an awful start to the second half. I don't think we had the ball really for about 20 minutes … through our own individual errors and ill-discipline really hurt us.

"Even in the second half, we had our chances to still win the game.

"Again that's something the players as individuals have got to learn, you can't win football games and making those errors and having individuals make ill-disciplined decisions because it puts us under too much pressure.

"You need the ball to win, and we didn't have it again."

With the finals long gone and even the mathematical hopes of finishing better than last now all but gone, the motivation through the rest of the year needs to be about looking for improvement, he added.

"We all want to be winning but it's about improving," he said.

"There were moments in that game I thought we scored some really good tries. I thought some of our defence at times, they throw a fair bit at you the Tigers but defensively we were good."

Barrett will also have a nervous wait on the availability of props Dylan Napa and Jack Hetherington, who were each placed on report for dangerous tackles, with the latter sin-binned for contact that appeared to be minor compared to other offences over the weekend that did not result in sin bins.

"I didn't think there was too much in that one," Barrett said.

"He's been put on report about six times for no charges … it's something we've got to address. You can't tackle high but I didn't think it was deserved of 10 minutes."