Penrith coach Anthony Griffin remains upbeat about his team's premiership trajectory despite tumbling out of the NRL top eight with a close loss to South Sydney on Friday.
After a week in which captain Matt Moylan was one of three players dropped for disciplinary reasons, the Panthers were brave but lacked polish in a 21-20 defeat to the Rabbitohs.
Ahead of next week's clash against reigning premiers Cronulla, the pre-season favourites are now in real danger of losing touch with the competition's pacesetters.
Griffin declined to talk about his axed players following the heartbreaking loss, but was more than willing to discuss the players who gave a good account of themselves at Pepper Stadium.
"I don't want to talk about (those players)," he said.
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"We had a team out there tonight representing our club that competed and made the club proud - certainly I was - of the way they went about that game.
"It was something that slipped away from them a couple of times, in the first 20 minutes, and the middle 20 minutes of the second half. We just kept coming back at the game.
"I couldn't have been happier with the effort and endeavour and character they showed."
It was the third time in four weeks that the Panthers had shown plenty of ticker but were left without reward - including a two-point defeat to the then-undefeated Sydney Roosters a fortnight ago - but Griffin is adamant his team is growing into the season.
"Obviously you'd like to be winning, particularly in a game like that tonight where we overcome a lot of obstacles to get ourselves in a position to win," he said.
"But we're building some really good performances, we'll get stronger from it. The season is only a quarter of the way over, there's a lot of football to go over."
Asked how many players he would have back on deck to take on the Sharks, Griffin only mentioned injured duo Bryce Cartwright and James Fisher-Harris.
However it is unlikely he will omit Moylan and fellow bad boys Waqa Blake and Peta Hiku again.
"I'll worry about that later. I think Fisher-Harris, he's definitely available next week. If it was a semi-final, he would've played tonight," he said.
"Bryce Cartwright has had his best week of training in a month, so he's going to be very close."
