The Gold Coast Titans will have do what just one team has achieved in over 100 years should they lose to Canberra in next weekend's NRL clash.

Only Newtown Jets in 1933 have tasted defeat in their first four games and gone on to win a Premiership.

It's hard to believe barely a month into the 2011 season the Titans could be facing a game which has such a massive bearing on their premiership chances.

But stats guru David Middleton says only the 1933 Jets side have managed such a woeful start to the season and enjoyed glory at the end of it, with the victorious South Sydney side of 1953 coming closest after starting their campaign with three straight losses.

Given their dire predicament, Titans coach John Cartwright will be sweating on scans results for busy back-rower Ashley Harrison who looked to have suffered a hamstring injury towards the end of the 14-8 loss to Brisbane.

Cartwright's side can ill-afford to be without Harrison, who has one of the best work rates in the game.

The Titans' performance was a big improvement on their poor 40-12 effort the previous week against Melbourne and neither Cartwright or skipper Scott Prince are prepared to throw in the towel.

Prince admitted after the third straight loss the players were in unfamiliar waters after solid starts in previous years and making back-to-back finals.

"It is but all the boys are remaining positive," he said.

"It's an important part of our team that we stick together and I though we turned the corner compared to last week's performance."

Cartwright, who said his players had controlled things better and hustled a lot harder, said results in the first three rounds showed the competition was very even in 2011.

"We're all starting level. People are surprised by results, but there's nothing that should surprise anyone at the moment, it's a very even playing field," he said.

Cartwright saw enough improvement to suggest they could break the drought against Canberra.

"We had a few blokes out there like Brad Meyers, Anthony Laffranchi and Anthony Minichiello having pretty much their first games of the year who had to play big game time through some interchange problems again," he said.

"They're going to be better for run.

"We probably could have scored more points with the ball but we had three tries disallowed and if we get one of them, it might have been a different ball game."

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP