Parramatta coach Brad Arthur has laid into his team's "soft" goal line defence after conceding four tries in 23 minutes in Friday's loss to the Sydney Roosters.
The Eels looked set to open their season with three straight wins for the first time since 1993 when they led by two with 20 minutes to go an ANZ Stadium.
However, the defending premiers flexed their muscle to romp home and hand the Eels their first defeat of the season.
The turning point came when former Roosters winger Blake Ferguson turned the ball over in the set after Maika Sivo gave his team the lead.
"It's not great turning the ball over out of red zone off the back of points. But still it's once set of six tackles that we needed to defend," Arthur said.
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The Eels had entered the clash with plenty of confidence after impressing over the opening fortnight with wins over Penrith and Canterbury.
And while they performed strongly over the opening hour, they allowed the Roosters back into the contest with handling issues in the second half.
Whilst disappointed with his team's error count, Arthur was even more filthy with their inability to defend their mistakes.
"We came here tonight looking for an opportunity and we gave ourselves a real good opportunity with 20 minutes to go," Arthur said.
"We can say that we turned over some cheap possession at times and didn't quite get the detail right with some silly errors.
"But at the end of the day, if we want to mix it with the really good teams, we've got to be harder with our defence on the tryline.
"We can't allow soft tries at he tryline. We can say it's a weight of possession, but at the end of the day some of the tries they scored weren't good enough."
Clinton Gutherson and Junior Paulo were among the Eels' best, while Sivo finished the night with two tries.
"Yeah, he's growing in confidence," Arthur said.
"I'd like to think our boys will walk away from here knowing that under pressure, if we can improve a couple of areas of our game.
"Those simple errors and just having a bit more resolve on the tryline, that we can win plenty of games of football moving forward."
