A bitterly disappointed Western Force coach Simon Cron said there was no time to "cry or mourn" about the 56-24 defeat to the ACT Brumbies in Saturday's Round 1 Swyftx Super Rugby Pacific clash with the ACT Brumbies at HBF Park.
Cron said coaches and players started looking for a fix to problems in the change rooms straight after the final whistle as they prepare for the Blues at Arena Joondalup's HIF Health Insurance Oval on Saturday.
Cron was disappointed that after controlling the first 20 minutes before the first water break, they began chasing the game, and skill execution fell away.
"We have to be better than that," Cron said. "Look, you don't get to cry about it, you don't get to mourn that 'we played a poor game'.
"We've got to review straight away, get the fixes that are most critical for the team.
"We've had a discussion in the sheds around that and now get back out on the park and start fixing it.
"I'm bitterly disappointed, mainly because the first 20 we controlled the ball.
"I feel then we just got really narrow and started overworking our forwards quite a lot... have to look at how and why and fix that."
The Force were just 14-10 down at the break having been held up over the line a couple of times and not able to convert pressure to points.
"We did a lot of work for little reward," Cron said. "We need to be better.
"That drain on us probably in the second half started to show.
"We started chasing the game and while chasing the game our skill execution was not good enough and gave them a lot of good transition to tries.
"You see that in those last three tries. But even when chasing the game we have to be better with our skill execution. They were better than us."
Cron was also unhappy with his side's reloads, off the ground speed and kicking strategy.
But he said: "I don't think the score is reflective.
"I think we were overplaying and allowed them to get back in."
Captain Jeremy Williams was happy with the first 20 minutes before the first water break when they were winning territory, applying pressure and took a 10-point lead.
"Although we didn't come away with all the points, we still had points on the board, and we were building pressure that way," he said.
"After that 20-minute block we got sloppy with our skill execution, our breakdown let us down a fair bit, whether that was cleaners, reload speed off kicks, a few turnovers.
"That ultimately let us down. I think we were overplaying our hand too much, getting really narrow, turnovers at the ruck.
"Our discipline let us down. We weren't winning that territory in the last 60 minutes.
"We were definitely quite narrow and that's something we'll look at this week and how we can fix it."
The Force ran in three tries from flanker Vaiolini Ekuasi, second-rower Franco Molina and loose forward Carlo Tizzano in his 50th Super game. Ben Donaldson converted all three and kicked a penalty.
But at the other end the Brumbies crossed for eight converted tries.
Cron is waiting for injury reports on number eight Nick Champion De Crespigny who limped off seven minutes before the break with a “knee tweak” and prop Harry Johnson-Holmes who played 50 minutes in his first appearance in 644 games after recovering from injury, having “rolled his ankle”.
