It wasn't quite the loss they needed to have, but South Sydney hooker Damien Cook says their golden point defeat to Manly may be a blessing in disguise.
After a stellar opening three weeks to Wayne Bennett's reign at Redfern which saw them being discussed as premiership heavyweights, the Rabbitohs were brought back to the pack after being sunk by a Daly Cherry-Evans field goal on Saturday.
Cook said he had felt the defeat coming for several weeks and had they scraped home against the Sea Eagles, it would have papered over the cracks and their problems would have continued to mount.
Instead, he says the squad has been forced to stare down and confront inadequacies which have emerged in their game over the last few weeks.
"No one wants to lose, you wish you could win every game," Cook told AAP.
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"But it's probably highlighted a few areas we need to fix.
"And if we won, who knows if we would have picked up on them.
"The positive we need to take out of the loss is we can find out what we need to work on and knock it on the head early."
Cook echoed the sentiments of Bennett, who said they had been building towards their first loss of the season.
He pointed to the way they had let the Gold Coast back into the match the previous week.
On Saturday at Lottoland, both of the Sea Eagles' tries coincided with Souths turning over cheap possession and long periods of failing to complete a set.
The NSW and Australian No.9 said their woes were simple to turn around and they were something they would address heading into Saturday's clash with the Warriors.
"It is an easy fix because it's an individual thing," Cook said.
"A lot of them were knock-ons in the play-the-ball or a bad pass. Wayne just spoke about (how) everyone has to worry about their jobs.
"We didn't play our best footy but we got to golden point and we gave ourselves a chance. We weren't happy with that, putting (Adam Reynolds) under pressure (to get a field goal). We know we've got more points in us."
