Anderson has been a key out along with fellow key forward Jacob Sinclair over the past month as the Pickers struggled for consistency.

But the good news is that the Pickers have emerged after a morale boosting win against a near full strength Cessnock in third spot with five wins, one win ahead of a chasing pack including Kurri Kurri and the Goannas.

"We've been OK if you gave us a rating on our season to date. We've had some good solid wins but some disappointing and unacceptable performances as well which have resulted in heavy losses," Maitland coach Luke Dorn said this week.

"We've given ourselves a chance of a strong back half of the season, especially with the number of injuries we've had.

"We're still finding a way to win which has been extremely important and that will give us an opportunity to be in contention at the back half of the year.

"The answer has been the same whether it has been a good performance or a bad performance, it's been our attitude and our ability to go harder and longer than the opposition and stick to what makes us a good team.

"There's little bits and pieces in games, the effort areas you focus on and a lot of times they've been the difference in games.

"It hasn't been we've been out-skilled. or out-executed, or even outwitted tactically. Somebody not turning up on the inside defensively, missing their assignment in defence or not having the ability to find a pass or dropping a ball, or getting up to play the ball and dropping it.

"Things that are completely in your control is where we have fallen down.

"But on the flip-side that's exactly where we have excelled as well.

"For us it is about the consistency in mindset both at training and then transferring that into game day."

Dorn said the Pickers three worst performances - two big losses to Wests and one to Souths - had all come about because of a 20 minute lapse in concentration and lack of trust in the game plan.

"We made a mistake and it cost us a try, but instead of just returning to what we needed to do one or two players panicked and tried to correct things themselves and it just compounded the errors and led to more tries.

"We need to learn to stick at our game when things go wrong and trust in the process. Know that you are not going to make up for things in next set but it will turn around."

Dorn said he saw very encouraging signs in last rounds win against the Goannas.

"We were able to do what we wanted to do for a long period of time and that didn't necessarily reflect on the scoreboard at half-time or even early in the second half but it did at the end of the game.

"We conceded a try from dummy half and a try one pass off dummy half and they weren't acceptable from where we set our standards and that's something we certainly want to address.

"But where we did do well was that we stuck to it and we were happy to stick to what we said we were going to do. Every single player won their battle and was consistent."

Dorn said the return of Anderson was a welcome boost and hopefully the start of more players returning to the team.

"Potentially Sam will play this week but I don't seen anyone else coming back into the team this week from injury," he said.

"We just haven't been able to be consistent with our team. It's not an excuse for our performances but it's certainly a reason why at times we are a little bit disjointed and maybe not as clinical as we would like to be.

"Hopefully we're through the worst of it."

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