The Raiders are now four points out of the top eight after they were sunk by a late field goal in Saturday's 21-20 home loss to Cronulla.

It is the fourth time this year the Raiders have succumbed to late defeats at home, and it threatens to derail a season where they've shown real improvement.

After a Johnathan Thurston field goal consigned them to defeat in round 15, Raiders coach Ricky Stuart revealed his team had suffered a mental letdown and subsequently got beaten 30-8 by the Warriors in Auckland the following week.

Shillington hopes the team learns a lesson from how they reacted, but conceded it's tough not to wonder 'what if?' at times.

"Of course it's tough [to recover emotionally] but we've just got to, it's do or die for us every week," Shillington said.

"We have to turn it around next week, we just have to win, there's no two ways about it.

"At the end of the year you always look back and think if we only won a couple more of these tight ones."

The Raiders have been resilient this season but Shillington believes the Sharks were more desperate late in the golden point win.

"When it's golden point or two minutes on the clock you just can't leave anything in the tank, we've got to show more urgency than that," Shillington said.

"That's what the Sharks did. Unfortunately we didn't do the same thing and that's why they came away with the win.

"It's a lesson to take out of it, but in saying that I loved how the boys hung in there all game after a slow start, they showed a lot of courage.

"But when it comes to it we have to make those last efforts count.

"It does show there's a lot of passion and desire there to win, we just have to be smarter about it."

The Raiders were on the wrong end of a handful of controversial refereeing decisions, but hooker Josh Hodgson conceded their first half, where they conceded seven penalties and made seven errors, hurt them.

"The first half was pretty poor from us and we dropped too much ball and gave away too many penalties," he said.

"That's the job for us senior players in this group and the coach, to make sure we're up for next week and getting down to business again.

"We can't be sulking and kicking stones for too long.

"We could say if we beat the Cowboys or Bulldogs at home we'd be up there, but we didn't, that's the situation we're in."

Raiders back rower Sia Soliola admitted the run of tight home losses could come back to bite them come September.

"It's a bit of deja vu, we have to learn to turn those kind of games into wins," he said.

"We're learning, these matches aren't going our way and that's what we need to change.

"We know what's at stake. Our season's on the line and we've got to be up for this game.

"Penrith had a big loss [in Melbourne on Friday] and they'll be raring to go after the backlash."

RAIDERS TIGHT HOME LOSSES THIS YEAR

Round three: St George Illawarra 22 bt Canberra 20 – The Raiders looked set to toast prop Dane Tilse's 200th game with a big win after racing to an 18-0 lead. But the Dragons stormed home to win with tries to Mitch Rein (70th minute) and Joel Thompson (74th minute).

Round 11: Canterbury 41 bt Canberra 34 – Without several Origin stars the Bulldogs raced to a 26-0 lead, but the Raiders rallied to level scores at 34-all. But a late field goal to Josh Reynolds from a wide angle just snuck over the cross bar to get Canterbury home.

Round 15: North Qld 21 bt Canberra 20: Down 18-14, the Cowboys took the lead 20-18 through a Gavin Cooper try in the 67th minute. A Jarrod Croker penalty goal levelled the match at 20-all, before Johnathan Thurston stole the game for the visitors with a last-second field goal.

Round 19: Cronulla 21 bt Canberra 20: A potential match-winning try to Sharks prop Andrew Fifita is disallowed, but Cronulla takes the game into golden point with a penalty goal. Valentine Holmes steps up for the Sharks in the fourth minute of golden point to slot the decisive one-pointer.