The Dragons pummeled the Hawks at WIN Entertainment Centre on Wednesday night, handing Wollongong an embarrassing 34-point loss, their fourth in a row.

"We've been training harder than we played in that game and that's very disappointing," Cooks said.

"I don't know if it was because of the opposition or the lights coming on, but we've definitely been training harder than that. We've been up and into one another (at training), playing with a higher level of physicality to what we played against those guys."

If the Hawks are to turn things around they will need to assert themselves physically against the well-drilled Dragons side.

The Brian Goorjian-coached Dragons took the Hawks out of their offensive flow with physical play on Wednesday.

"They get in the lane and take people out of their offensive sets and they did that very well," Cooks said.

"We didn't handle it at all and if we expect to be a play-off team then we need to be more disciplined.

"We need to be physically strong enough to catch the ball where we want to and not panic when they deny the ball.

"They're physical and they're bumping in the lanes and not allowing us to catch the ball where we want to - we were catching it 3m out in the post because they physically man-handled us, not letting us get where we wanted to be."

Centre Cam Tragardh, who top-scored for Wollongong on Wednesday with 23 points, said they needed to show more confidence in offence.

"We have issues that need to be resolved with our discipline," Tragardh said.

"We need to get back to the way we were playing, when we were the aggressor at both ends.

"We need to stick with the plays - they're good plays - but the minute they take us out of it, we seem to think that's the licence to go out and do it ourselves, we need to trust in the offence."

Bench forward Anthony Petrie, who missed Wednesday's game with a severe cork, is unlikely to play tomorrow, but is still a day-to-day proposition.

The Hawks are now in eighth position with a 6-9 record.