With their hopes of a spot in the top eight ended, the Raiders want to end their season on a high against minor premiers Melbourne Storm in Melbourne on Saturday.

Hodgson will be part of Wayne Bennett's England squad for the World Cup, which starts in October, and while the Storm clash will pit him against Australian captain Cameron Smith, he wasn't looking at the round 26 game as a chance to tune up for the international showpiece.

"I just want to finish the season strongly with the boys and then I'll be back in here training with a week off or so and keep ticking over until the World Cup," he said.

"Obviously it's something I'm looking forward to, but it's at the back of my mind at the moment."

Instead, his only concern was getting the two points against the best team in the NRL.

He said the players returned to training "pretty disappointed" on Monday after a Daly Cherry-Evans field goal ended their finals hopes.

But he said they've been training well and have their sights set on beating a full-strength Storm, with Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy opting not to rest any players ahead of the finals.

Hodgson was relishing the chance to test himself against the best team in the NRL, who he predicted would go on and win the grand final.

"We're all proud men and we're a proud club and we want to finish strongly. We're pretty disappointed at how we've played this year and where we've finished up in the league," Hodgson said.

"We want to try and get any kind of respect and pride back that we can. I think going down to Melbourne and finishing the year really strongly could be a good thing for us.

"We just want to play our best footy down there, we don't want to go away thinking we didn't put our best foot forward today and be even more disappointed about our finish to the season."

Raiders coach Ricky Stuart has promised a "brutal review" of the season, after they started out as one of the premiership favourites.

Hodgson said one area they'd look at would be why it took them so long to fix their problems from the first half of the season, when errors and ill discipline proved costly.

"One thing we're pretty good at is people speaking up and being accountable for their own actions," he said.

"We'll look at this season and areas in which we've probably improved on in the past few weeks, but probably took too long to improve on and why it took so long, and areas that worked for us and areas that didn't work for us.

"Next years's going to be a new year, but we certainly want to learn from this year. We've had too many close losses this year and that's no secret and that's something we certainly need to fix up."

NRL ROUND 26

Saturday: Canberra Raiders v Melbourne Storm in Melbourne, 7.30pm. Live on Fox League.

Raiders: 1. Jack Wighton, 2. Nick Cotrick, 3. Jarrod Croker (c), 4. Joey Leilua, 5. Jordan Rapana, 6. Blake Austin, 7. Aidan Sezer, 8. Junior Paulo, 9. Josh Hodgson, 10. Shannon Boyd, 11. Josh Papalii, 12. Elliott Whitehead, 13. Sia Soliola. Interchange: 14. Kurt Baptiste, 15. Joe Tapine, 16. Dave Taylor, 17. Luke Bateman. Reserves: 18. Jeff Lima , 19. Clay Priest, 20. Royce Hunt, 21. Michael Oldfield.

Storm: 1. Billy Slater, 2. Suliasi Vunivalu, 3. Will Chambers, 4. Curtis Scott, 5. Josh Addo-Carr, 6. Cameron Munster, 7. Cooper Cronk, 8. Jesse Bromwich , 9. Cameron Smith (c), 10. Jordan McLean, 11. Felise Kaufusi, 12. Tohu Harris , 13. Dale Finucane. Interchange: 14. Kenny Bromwich , 15. Tim Glasby, 16. Nelson Asofa Solomona, 17. Slade Griffin. Reserves: 18. Robbie Rochow, 19. Joe Stimson, 20. Young Tonumaipea, 21. Nate Myles.