I think everyone knows what Kalyn Ponga brings to a footy side, especially ours.
Losing him after only eight minutes last week against the Roosters was massive for us.
But it certainly shouldn't be an excuse for us to dish up what we did.
In the last 10 to 15 minutes of the game, once the result was already determined, we opened up and started playing some footy.
We should have played like that a lot earlier.
The pressure to perform obviously hasn't been good for us this season.
Hopefully we can play more like we did in that period moving forward.
Kalyn will be out this weekend and might not play again this season, so we're going to have to find a way to stand up without him and score some points.
At the end of the day, we've got to lift if he is not playing.
It shouldn't affect us as much as it does.
But I think Tex Hoy will do a job for us with Kalyn out.
Every time he has come into the side this year, he has brought a spark to us.
I'm pumped for him to get another chance in the NRL before he heads off to the Super League next year.
It's going to be a bit of a different end to the season now knowing we're out of contention for the finals.
It's not the outcome we wanted this year but it is what it is.
All we can do now is try and control how we finish the season.
If you don't end the year off strong, it's a long time before your next game.
If you finish poorly, you end up thinking about it all summer. You don't want to be waking up every day and dwelling on how the season ended.
We've got a chance to finish the year off strong and know going into the off-season that we've had a dig and can hold our heads high.
If we get some results in these coming six games, at least we can hang our hats on that over summer.
And we certainly shouldn't be short on motivation given our position on the ladder right now.
I know we're equal on points with the Bulldogs and Warriors, but we're placed 14th.
We definitely don't want to be in contention for the wooden spoon.
A win against Canterbury on Sunday will be a step further away from last place.
They've played well the past six weeks, the Bulldogs, they've really ramped it up.
It's a credit to their playing group and the club, to see where they've come from.
We only secured a victory against them in the last 10 minutes earlier in the year and it's going to be another tough game on Sunday.
There will be a big group of Canterbury fans coming up to McDonald Jones Stadium given how they performed last week against the Titans and I know they'll fancy their chances against us.
We'll need to be ready.
