After just eight rounds, Canberra's NRL season is on life support, with skipper Alan Tongue admitting Sunday's fixture against Wests Tigers is a must-win to keep their finals hopes afloat.

Installed as serious premiership contenders in the pre-season due to a strong 2010, a dominant forward pack and some of the competition's most exciting talents in their backline, Canberra have fallen well below expectations to date.

They are approaching their worst ever losing streak, when they lost eight consecutive matches across the 1985 and 1986 seasons, while they are also in a position to claim their first wooden spoon since their debut season in 1982.

Things have gone worse than coach David Furner could have conjured up in his worst nightmare - and there doesn't appear to be a magic fix on the horizon.

Talismanic five-eighth Terry Campese is targeting the club's round 13 clash with North Queensland as his earliest return date - but coming off a knee reconstruction, he will be below his best initially.

Tongue is under no illusions about just how crucial the Tigers fixture could be to getting their season back on track.

"Everybody knows the position that we're in," he said on Saturday.

"We probably don't have to speak about it too much because everybody understands the losses that we've had.

"And everybody knows the importance of the game."

And it does not get any easier this week.

The Tigers have dominated recent fixtures against the Raiders, winning seven of their past eight, including a 26-24 win which knocked Canberra out of the finals last year and a 34-24 victory in round three this season.

Furner pointed to the strike power of the Tigers' attacking trident Benji Marshall, Robbie Farah and Robert Lui as the biggest danger.

But Farah believed it was the Tigers, who have won just one of their last four, who would need to fix up their sloppy kicking game or be prepared to feel the wrath of dynamic Raiders fullback Josh Dugan.

"Our kicking has probably lost us the last two games we've played so if we kick like we have in the last two weeks, Dugan will tear us apart," he said.

Once again Tongue, with just one match under his belt since returning from a shoulder injury, will start the match from the bench.

He said some honest sessions during the week will be the key to arresting the alarming form slump.

"We haven't sugar-coated anything, but we've just had an honest look and we've tried to narrow our focus," he said.

"We've tried to ... understand some of the errors and the discipline and penalties that we've given away over the last couple of weeks that have let the game slip away from us."

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