That's why they lost the first three by a combined total of just five points, despite being in control of all three games.

How to fix it? Only a win could do it, Stuart said.

But that seems a long way away, especially with a short turnaround before they face a struggling Canterbury Bulldogs at Canberra Stadium on Thursday night.

Stuart didn't miss when asked what went wrong in the opening 40 minutes.

"Soft. Soft football, soft pieces of play, soft choices and I've probably protected them for too long," he said.

"Over the last three weeks I've thought their effort was there. There was no effort in that first half, that wasn't us and it was soft.

"Personally I'm disappointed with myself because I should've reacted the same way after our first loss against the Gold Coast because of our soft play in the last 10 minutes of that game, and our soft play in the last 10 minutes of our second game and our third game.

"It's cost us three wins through soft passages of play. It just started in another part of the game tonight, it got them off to a start which was very, very tough to pull back."

It clearly hurt the man who won three premierships wearing that exact same jersey.

Not surprising given Stuart's reputation as the complete opposite of soft.

The one good thing to come out of the game was there were no injuries for the Green Machine, prompting Stuart to challenge his players to prove they deserve to wear the lime green he wore 203 times.

"Why should I make changes when they deliver that crap?" Stuart said.

"They should be all owning up to themselves saying, 'I want to play to get myself out of it', because what they dished up tonight, they should be embarrassed to put a Raiders jumper on."

They had the dream start with the opening try of the game, but from there it turned into a nightmare as a Turbo-charged Manly tore them to shreds with four tries in 12 minutes to set up a 26-6 half-time lead.

Both Jake and Tom Trbojevic took turns in setting up and scoring tries in a display that would've made NSW Blues coach Brad Fittler salivate at the possibilities.

The only catch was an ankle injury for Tom which forced him off the field late – although initial assessments suggested it wasn't too bad.

Of more concern for Manly was the knee injuries to Curtis Sironen and Kelepi Tanginoa, with concerns around their anterior cruciate ligaments and medial ligaments.

Raiders captain Jarrod Croker said they needed to restore the pride in the jersey against the Bulldogs.

"It's attitude. We don't have a choice mate. It doesn't matter how long [until the next game] … if we played tomorrow we would have to play better than that," he said.

"We've just got to rip in and put pride in the jersey. Because like you said the first half was nowhere near good enough, the first four weeks haven't been good enough.

"We might've played good for 70 minutes but we didn't win. So we've got to go out there and win."

AT A GLANCE

MANLY SEA EAGLES 32 (Matthew Wright 2, Jake Trbojevic, Tom Trbojevic, Daly Cherry-Evans tries; Cherry-Evans 6 goals) bt CANBERRA RAIDERS 16 (Sia Soliola, Jarrod Croker, Jack Wighton tries; Jarrod Croker 2 goals) at Brookvale. Referees: Adam Gee, Tim Roby. Crowd: 9392.

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David Polkinghorne is a sports reporter at The Canberra Times.

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