Cronulla coach Ricky Stuart has praised his team for their endeavour and spirit despite slumping to their fourth straight NRL defeat.

The Sharks, riddled with injury and suspensions, went down 24-14 to Canberra at Toyota Stadium but Stuart believes few teams could have matched his side's ability to cope with the depletion to their playing ranks.

Four of the players who started last week's loss to the Bulldogs were missing in the loss to the Raiders, with prop Jack Afamasaga injured and captain Paul Gallen, winger Misi Taulapapa and prop Kade Snowden all suspended.

Those changes meant it was an inexperienced team which Stuart fielded, with teenage pair Johnny Mannah and Matthew Wright both making their first-grade debuts.

And despite his team going down again, Stuart avoided a repeat of the spray he gave his team after the 24-12 defeat to the Bulldogs.

"We were a very good football team tonight, I thought we played extremely well, it was the best game of our season and it was our best performance," he said.

"The situation that we're in at the moment in regards to so many senior players out, not many clubs would be able to get up and play as well as these blokes did tonight.

"We're a football team playing without any luck."

Despite a bright start, the Sharks only had the first of winger David Simmons' hat-trick of tries to show for their dominance in the first 20 minutes.

And when Canberra's Terry Campese chipped, regathered and then sent centre Jarrod Croker over for his third try of the season, the Sharks had to settle for a 6-6 score at halftime.

Again they started the second half brightly, with Simmons latching on to Mitch Brown's cut-out ball to score his second.

But sandwiched either side of Simmons' third - an uncontested grab from a Brett Seymour cross-field kick - the Sharks twice allowed the Raiders to snare easy tries from dummy-half through Stuart Flanagan and Alan Tongue.

And it was the softness of those tries that left Stuart cursing his team's luck.

"Two tries from dummy-half - we spoke all week about both dummy halves diving over from close to the line - (the second try was) a little bit of chip, kick and a hope, could have gone either way," he said.

Stuart said he would talk to referee's boss Robert Finch about a possible fourth try to Simmons when the Sharks were trailing 18-14 late on which was disallowed and the resulting scrum feed was given to Canberra for a knock-on by Brown.

"I just really hope it came off us first because we should have got the scrum feed," he said.

"We're 10 metres out, scrum feed, we score there. Every time we got down there we scored tonight or if we didn't we looked dangerous ... and that's the luck we're getting at the moment.

"I just really, really hope for their sake it came off us first."

Campese secured the points late on when Tongue scooped up a loose ball and sent the pivot free for a 70m dash.

Stuart said he was unsure on the seriousness of an ankle injury to backrower Anthony Tupou in the first half, but the Kangaroo did return for the end of the second half.

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