And there was no greater example of that than Saturday's rollercoaster 46-24 loss to Souths at Maitland Sportsground.

In the 80 minutes Maitland managed to squeeze in two periods of play - about 30 minutes in total - where they were clearly the better side, looked in total control and had last season's grand finalists on the back foot.

But the other 50 minutes ranged from lacklustre to awful. It was certainly error riddled - and when Maitland make a mistake, they do it with an exclamation mark.

For a side with the quality of the reigning premiers, it was all Souths needed to put them to the sword. And it must have Maitland coach Luke Dorn pulling his hair out in frustration.

Dorn rightly points out that there's some quality football in his team ... but gee, they make it hard for themselves.

He wasn't pulling his punches after the game either. "We were awful and need to fix it quickly," he said.

Teams talk about a strong start. Maitland were down six-nil after 70 seconds from a bomb. Inside 10 minutes it was 12-0. Things look grim. But with prop Jayden Butterfield leading the way up the middle, the Pickers battled hard to grab the momentum and score twice in the next 15 minutes - 12-all and they're on top, full of confidence.

But a couple of terrible errors in the final 15 minutes of the half - the first a simple dropped pass from the kick-off near the Pickers tryline - and all their effort is undone.

Souths piled on three more tries as Maitland self destructed to head into the shed at half time with a 22-point lead - 34-12. It's game over.

The one striking problem for Maitland was that when they had their backs to the wall, their defence capitulated. Every time Souths got into Maitland's quarter, they would score.

The fact the Pickers, presumably after a well deserved half time blast from the coach, came out with far greater purpose and grit in the second half, only highlights where it all went wrong late in the first stanza.

Maitland, with Geordie Connelly calling the shots at five-eighth, scored the first two tries of the half and for the next 15 or 20 minutes dominated. At 34-24 with 20 minutes to go, they were in it for the most unlikely of wins.

But another basic error - a dropped pass picked up by Souths who run 50 metres to score - was the final nail.

There were positives. Connelly seemed to thrive on pointing the team around, and Butterfield was good.

Frazer Price was used as back-up hooker and his creativity could be valuable there.