NORTHERN Pride slumped to seventh place on the Intrust Super Cup ladder with a surprise 34-16 loss to Burleigh Bears on the Gold Coast yesterday.

Three late tries to the Pride did little to appease the frustrations of coach David Maiden after a first-half performance in which his team was outscored 20-0.

"It was a disgraceful first half. We had no contact defensively. We kept coming up with errors. It was extremely frustrating," Maiden said after the game.

"It’s like we were a different team from the one (that beat Mackay Cutters 34-10) last week."

According to Maiden, effort and attitude were once again lacking as his side slumped to its seventh loss of the season.

"Three of their four tries in the first half came off the back of our errors and we can’t afford to do that," Maiden said.

The Pride made a late run with forward stalwarts Cory Paterson, Joel Reithmuller and Ben Spina getting tries to help flatter the scoreline.

But for Maiden it did nothing to brighten the "bitterly disappointed" mood in the sheds after the game.

"The most frustrating thing is knowing that you contributed to your loss," Maiden said.

"You can sometimes accept it if you were just beaten by a better side, but our inconsistency is frustrating at the
moment."

Frustrating is a word Maiden has been using a lot this season.

After 14 games his team has seven wins and seven losses and needs to start a run to avoid missing the finals for the first time in the club’s history.

He remains confident he has the team to win the competition but hasn’t been able to unlock their best performances on a weekly basis.

"We’ve got to look at ourselves as an organisation. We’ve got to regroup Monday, Tuesday, learn from this poor performance," Maiden said.

"We’ve got a chance to redeem ourselves against (fourth-placed) Tweed coming up."

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