Experienced Penrith captain Petero Civoniceva has warned his side it can't expect to cruise into the finals after Parramatta put a huge dent in the Panthers' top two aspirations on Saturday night.
Matthew Elliott men's appeared on course for a big win over their western Sydney rival after coasting to a 22-0 lead on 33 minutes, only to fall into a big hole and concede 30 unanswered points in going down 34-28.
It was the second loss in a row for Penrith, putting it at risk of being overhauled on the competition table in coming weeks after a terrific start to the year.
Civoniceva was justifiably ropeable at the drop off in intensity.
"There are no excuses. We just weren't mentally tough enough," he said.
"We weren't there tonight."
"This next eight weeks is not going to be easy. No-one is going to give us the two points every week."
"There's a battle on. Everyone's fighting to get in there."
Asked what went wrong, the skipper replied: "It's ill-discipline and looking for easy options."
"That first 30 minutes we had a game plan and we stuck to it and were able to pick up a good lead on the back of that."
"But then that all went out the window."
A downcast Elliott could barely believe what he had just witnessed.
He told his players to learn from the experience or the club can forget about playing finals football for the first time in six years.
"It's needs to be our most important performance of the year," he said.
"Our ability didn't diminish, our physical prowess didn't evaporate - we just changed what we were thinking about and got a pretty bad tasting lesson."
"We dug a hole for ourselves and got anxious."
Penrith may be without half-back Luke Walsh for next week's trip to Melbourne, the in-form No.7 finishing the night with his thigh heavily strapped with ice.