'We're looking pretty average': Canberra Raiders five-eighth Jack Wighton's home truth

Canberra coughed up an 18-point lead in North Queensland over the weekend to slump to three consecutive losses and spark questions about their ability to crack the NRL's top eight this year.

It is a fair fall from grace for a Raiders outfit many tipped to be pressing for a grand final appearance.

Now the Raiders will need to overcome a five-day turnaround in a bid to shut down the high-flying South Sydney Rabbitohs at Canberra Stadium on Thursday night.

It has left Wighton to concede the team will "have to cop our medicine" until they find a way to turn things around, and they face a stern test in a bid to do so this week.

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"The last three weeks has been a very similar story, its all about focusing on us now," Wighton said.

"We've put ourselves in this position so we have to try and get ourselves out of it.

"If we play like we did in the first half [against the Cowboys], we'll blow any team off the park but at the moment we're looking pretty average.

"Until we do that, we're going to have to cop our medicine."

But the try that helped the Cowboys draw level is likely to come under the microscope during NRL head of football Graham Annesley's weekly football briefing this week.

North Queensland centre Justin O'Neill pounced on a Scott Drinkwater kick in the 59^th minute to score, but the 30-year-old was almost certainly offside.

The ensuing conversion saw the hosts draw level before a Valentine Holmes penalty goal with 11 minutes remaining pushed the Cowboys two points clear.

Raiders coach Ricky Stuart was left in a sombre mood in the aftermath of the two-point defeat against a side tipped to miss the top eight.

But even after his side gave up an 18-point lead he stopped short of a spray like last week that saw him say some players "were happy to put on an NRL jumper and think they're an NRL player".

"There is always effort there, there is always effort there," Stuart said following the loss to the Cowboys.

"That first half has shown we've certainly got the ability to play. I've got to look at it again, but there were some parts of our game when we just worked our bums off to get out of our end.

"Then we got to a poor field position to kick, all of a sudden we were kicking into their 40 and they were back on a roll again. Certainly there were some tries there we should have defended.

"There were two or three tries there, in all respect to the Cowboys, I believe we defend every week but they got through.

"In that second half we started to lack a bit of energy because of the amount of defence we had to do, and you fall out of shape in your attack, and we lost our way."