Former Raiders captain Alan Tongue has urged the team to block out the noise and use Saturday's clash against Newcastle in Wagga as an "outlet" to help ease the pressure valve.
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Canberra, one of the premiership fancies at the start of the season, has dropped four straight games and faces an equally desperate Knights side with an identical 3-5 record.
Tongue, who captained Canberra through similar turbulent periods, said a strong performance would help take the blowtorch off the club, and felt the Raiders weren't too far away from clicking.
"Sometimes you can get overwhelmed by it but you're not that far away from one good win and it builds that confidence," Tongue said.
"I can only speak about my time, but footy was our outlet. We all understood the media and the outside noise that comes with it is what makes the game and makes it exciting, but what we love doing is playing footy.
"You try and have a bit of fun at training, do the hard work when you need to rip in and focus, and that's what you go back to. Once you get the balance right the wins come, that would absolutely be a focus you would go with."
Tongue said the hunger and desperation in defence the Raiders had based their recent success around, including a grand final in 2019 and a preliminary final last year, had gone missing for a couple of weeks.
However he was encouraged by their effort areas in last week's loss to the Rabbitohs, where Jack Wighton was the only member of their first choice spine to play.
Josh Papalii will return for the Wagga game, and Tongue said the representative star must find his inner drive to help guide the Raiders out of their slump.
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"Everyone knows the calibre of player he is but I think he would say, and everybody agrees, his standards weren't where anybody wanted them to be," Tongue said.
"It [the week off] gave him a chance to get that energy back and a bit of hunger, which is so important.
"I think there's some hunger there that has just been missing the last couple of weeks. To me one of the big missing ingredients of the previous two weeks was the hunger and desperation, the pride in defence.
"We haven't seen that in a few years, the Raiders getting beaten because they haven't had the energy or the enthusiasm of the opposition.
"I'm sure Ricky [Stuart] will put that back into them and it won't be too far.
"I thought their game last week, other than a couple of tries they let in that they'd be disappointed about, it was a top-shelf performance."
