Manly coach Des Hasler has refused to concede the club's horror injury toll finally came to bear during their 36-18 dusting at the hands of the Gold Coast.
The Sea Eagles and the second coming of Hasler have been the good news story of this year's NRL season as his injury-ravaged outfit defied expectation to entrench themselves in the top eight.
Hasler has deservedly earned plaudits for the way he has instilled a defensive steel and resolve in a no-frills side, many of whom were unknowns coming into the year.
They had the likes Daly Cherry-Evans, Tom Trbojevic, Trent Hodkinson, Lachlan Croker and Moses Suli missing against the Titans.
And while they had shrugged off their injury worries in winning six of their previous eight, they slumped to their biggest defeat of the season against the struggling Titans.
"You can make all kinds of excuses. And you could say the four-day turnaround from Sunday (was an excuse)," Hasler said.
"But we had opportunities where we could have won that game and we didn't.
"We were a long way off, we just didn't do the fundamentals. We didn't give ourselves a chance really."
If Cherry-Evans is cleared of an ankle injury, he will join Queensland in State of Origin camp next week.
Hasler said Trbojevic would not return from a hamstring complaint against Penrith next week.
Hasler described their lack of possession and field position against the Gold Coast as "ludicrious" and said his side stepped away from the fundamentals that had served them so well over the past two months.
"I thought we were a little bit down on those effort areas," Hasler said.
"Our kicking game was a little poor. We didn't give ourselves a chance with field position.
"Possession was ludicrous, we didn't control possession enough. We didn't control possession enough, it was nearly 60-40, it's just not feasible to try and win games off the back of that."
Australian Associated Press
