Parramatta coach Paul Hardwick believes his side has shown real improvement in recent weeks, despite a string of poor results.

The Two Blues have won just one match in 2017, however Hardwick has taken plenty of positives from his side’s recent performances and is confident Parramatta will challenge West Harbour this weekend.

“On the scoreboard, the last few weeks have been disappointing but our match statistics show real improvement. Everyone wants to win but we also want measurable improvements and we’ve seen that,” Hardwick said.

“The last few weeks have indicated the systems we have been tweaking with are starting to be executed for larger parts of the game. Unfortunately we just haven’t been consistent enough to put a full 80 minutes together.”

After a strong pre-season, Parramatta haven’t found their best in the first half of the season, but Hardwick said he expects his new look side to be a lot more competitive in the back end of the season, starting this weekend against the Pirates.

“We’ve got to be consistent against Wests. We need to string moments in the game together to gather momentum and our mistake rate will need to be extremely low in order to maintain momentum,” he said.

“That’s something we haven’t been able to do so far this year.”

Star Two Blues fullback Johnathon Malo will miss the clash after receiving a red card for a dangerous tackle against Warringah last weekend, with Jaline Graham set to start in the number 15 jersey.

West Harbour caused their second big upset of the year last weekend, defeating Sydney Uni 40-38.

“We’re starting to really understand our game structure and our roles and responsibilities. Our defence in the last 5 minutes was good team defence,” Pirates coach Todd Louden said.

West Harbour’s third win of the season leaves them just six competition points outside of the top six but Louden said the Pirates weren’t getting too far ahead of themselves.

“It’s not really a case of momentum, it’s more about continuing to learn, develop and improve each week. This year is a significant learning year for us,” he said.

“It’s going to be a physical game, we have a lot of respect for Parra. They’ve got some good forwards and some great broken field runners. I’ve had a good look at their games, and the score lines aren’t indicative of how they’ve played in parts.”