THEIR grip on a top-four spot looks more tenuous by the minute, but Dragons hardman Jack de Belin believes four weeks is more than enough time to recapture the form that saw his side emerge as title contenders earlier this season.
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In fact he's adamant it could take a single week despite suffering their fourth loss in five starts against the Warriors in Wollongong on Saturday. It puts a win over a top eight side more than 11 weeks into the past and has seen the chorus of naysayers emerge to put a line through their title hopes.
The Dragons remain in the top four but, on current form, face an uphill battle to stay there despite a favourable run home. De Belin, howeverm remains confident his side's not far off clicking back into top gear.
“Four weeks is plenty, it should only take one week,” de Belin said.
“If we'd got the win [on Saturday], it might have just sparked us and got us back on the front foot but, obviously, we lost it. It was disappointing, it was patchy, it's just not clicking at the moment.
“I think we're a bit down on confidence. You can see the effort's there, the boys are trying, it's not an energy or effort thing. They had a little bit of a run there and we just couldn't recover. It's a tough one but at the end of the day we've got to be better than that.
“I feel like we can get it back pretty quickly. I don't think it's one of those things where we need a month or six weeks or whatever it is to find our feet again. We've just got to turn it around and that comes from within.
“I feel like it's a pretty easy fix, we've just got to get a belief around us again because if you look at across the side there's so much talent so it's only a matter of time, hopefully, until we get back on track.”
De Belin, one of five Dragons players involved in Origin, carried a well-publicised hip injury through the rep period with the help of pain-killing injections but said he's feeling sound in body and mind despite his side's wobbles.
“I'm feeling pretty good to be honest,” de Belin said.
“When you're losing it's hard to stand out like I was and it's kind of been the case at the moment. We haven't been blowing sides apart like we were.
“In regards to the body, it's coming along really well. The mind's pretty good as well, collectively, I think it's just a confidence issue.”
De Belin has been a mainstay of Dragons sides to earn the 'May Premiers’ tag in recent seasons, but the 27-year-old says the current side has too many wise heads to allow that talk to be a distraction.
“It's only coming about if you buy into it and listen,” de Belin said.
“It has been a recurring issue, we do tend to start pretty well at the start of the year and flop out at the end there and put some pretty disappointing performances in.
“I feel with the side we've got this year, there's too many senior players and boys who've been here and done that before so I feel like we'll definitely bounce back. We've learned from past mistakes.”