Under-fire Canterbury coach Kevin Moore denied his club were in crisis after lowly Cronulla inflicted a fifth defeat in six NRL games on the struggling Bulldogs on Sunday.

Moore's future has been under scrutiny following a disappointing campaign from a club which has recruited heavily over the last two seasons.

The feeble 26-10 loss to a Paul Gallen-inspired Sharks at ANZ Stadium further cranked up the heat on the 46-year-old.

The loss meant the Bulldogs would start the week outside the top eight, but Moore maintained there's no need to panic and claimed his side's current situation was not affecting him.

"I just discard it (the speculation)," he said.

"It goes with the business. It's a results-oriented business and, at the moment, we're just sitting on the fringe of the eight.

"We're not sitting last. It's not dire straits from that point of view.

"We're there if we're good enough but we need to turn the corner very quickly and we need to find some confidence and we need to find a bit of belief."

Moore insisted the decision to drop Jamal Idris after he returned late from a trip to the Gold Coast on Monday and missed training was the right one to make despite the defeat.

"Your standards and the discipline standards that you try and maintain at your club are critical," he said.

"If you try and bend them just because you want to try and win a football game, you're going to end up in big trouble down the track.

"I didn't feel under any pressure at all this week to make a different decision. I made a decision I believe was right and we'll get on with the job."

Moore also said Idris let his teammates down with his actions.

"We'd had a pretty disappointing loss to Manly the week before, the players got three or four days off to refresh and then we all turned up Monday morning really keen to get on with the job this week and Jamal wasn't there, so yeah that's disappointing," he said.

The struggling Bulldogs take on Wests Tigers at Campbelltown on Friday in what is shaping as a must-win game.

Moore said he was fully expecting his side to cop plenty of criticism in the lead up to the western Sydney derby.

"We're going to take plenty of hits this week which comes with the territory," he said.

"But we've got to deal with that and turn up on Friday night against the Tigers and be ready to go."

In Sunday's other game at a sold-out Leichhardt Oval, Melbourne beat Tim Sheens' Tigers 12-4 to overtake St George Illawarra at the top of the ladder.

Converted tries from Ryan Hinchcliffe and Kevin Proctor sealed the win for the Storm, with Beau Ryan crossing for the Tigers, who lost Benji Marshall to a knee injury midway through the second half.

The Dragons, who lost to Brisbane on Friday, could slip to third if in-form Manly defeated Parramatta on Monday.

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP