DEFENCE – that will be the key area which Penrith coach Anthony Griffin will target this week as he prepares his Panthers for a showdown with the Canberra Raiders at Carrington Park.

While the Raiders will arrive in Bathurst on the back of a confidence boosting 60-6 win over the Wests Tigers, Penrith will have to lift after suffering yet another narrow loss.

They went down 20-18 to the Cronulla Sharks on Sunday afternoon at Southern Cross Group Stadium, Jamie Soward missing a conversion attempt in the closing minutes which would have sent the game into golden point extra-time.

It was Penrith’s fifth defeat from eight games this season and the third time they had lost by two points. All of their matches have been decided in the final five minutes.

“I am proud of their effort and how we moved the forwards obviously, but [Michael] Ennis’ try in the first half [diving over from dummy half] and the try from when we had the ball in their half at 14-all, they are just soft points that we shouldn’t be conceding,” Griffin said.

“We just didn’t defend well enough to win it, the tries they got were very soft.

“We had to work hard for ours, we just weren’t strong enough defensively at vital times when we needed to be.”

Griffin refused to blame the defeat on the loss of two members of their starting 13, with centre Waqa Blake injuring his hip after a try saving tackle on Sharks prop Andrew Fifita, while five-eighth Te Maire Martin was forced from the field with a suspected fractured shoulder following heavy contact with Valentine Holmes.

Both injuries occurred in the first half and the pair are in doubt for this Saturday’s match in Bathurst.

“We lost him [Te Maire Martin] and young centre Blake, but we had 15 guys there that kept coming and got ourselves in position to win the football game, just out of nowhere we let a couple of tries in. You can’t do that,” Griffin said.

While the Panthers scored four tries to the Sharks’ three – including a second half double to emerging talent James Fisher-Harris – enjoyed a better completion rate than their rivals and made more metres over the course 80 minutes, another statistic was more telling.

The Sharks had 27 missed tackles to the Panthers’ 40. Griffin knows his men can’t afford to be on the wrong side of that statistic against the Raiders.

“I couldn’t be prouder of them the way they are going about things, they aren’t giving anyone a moment’s peace,” he said.

“But defensively we are just letting in a couple of soft tries.”

The Panthers will square off with the Raiders from 3pm this Saturday at Carrington Park.