Easts coach Simon Craig said his young squad learnt some tough lessons in the opening two rounds of the competition but is hopeful those lessons will accelerate his team’s development ahead of an important round four clash against Souths this weekend.

The Tigers matched Jeeps for 40 minutes in their round one clash but struggled in the second half and lost three players to yellow cards in a 35-15 loss.

“I was really happy with our first 40 minutes,” Craig told Rugby News.

“We were right in the game at half time, but in the second half we made a few errors, the bounce of the ball didn’t go our way and things just compounded from there.

"When you spend as much time as we did defending our line, most of the time you’re going to concede points or penalties and unfortunately we conceded three yellow cards trying to stop points and the game got away from us.