Sometimes this year, their defence has been brilliant; for long periods in Brisbane, Melbourne and Penrith in particular, it was outstanding.
However, on too many other occasions it has been porous and is the main reason they now need to win all of their last five games to have any chance of making the play-offs, starting with Cronulla this afternoon.
"We are very up and down with our defence," admits hooker Friend. "If we could get some consistency there, that would be great.
"We work on tackle technique, on getting the wrestle right and on slowing the play-the-ball down and all that jazz - but we are losing it on the edges with some poor reads at the moment and that is hurting us."
Friend must feel the pain more than most as he, along with Elijah Taylor (among others), has been doing a mountain of defensive work.
"You can see sometimes guys don't want to get their heads in there," says Friend, who is averaging more than 41 tackles a game. "I guess that is just an attitude thing. Sometimes we are all loose and we are not tight around the ruck. We also have a lot of inexperience out there. Things can look good in training but game time is another thing altogether. It's no excuse but it is a factor."
Friend is not sure of the solution: "It is hard to say what to do," says Friend. "How do you switch people on? Because our momentum swings have been really bad. When people score against us, we find it hard to counter-act that. We can't get the momentum again. If we knew the answer, we would be fine but we are still searching for that."
"When it comes to defence, the first thing that comes to mind is experience," says Taylor, who averages more than 38 tackles a match.
"When I'm next to Simon [Mannering] or Friendy on defence, they are always talking to me. It is a great feeling having experience on your side and when the chips are down, they will usually come up with the right play."
Ruben Wiki is nominally the team's defensive coach, though assistant coach Tony Iro tends to oversee most of the sessions based around defence. There is no doubting Wiki's knowledge of defensive systems - especially after his long stint at Canberra under Tim Sheens and playing alongside some of the best minds in the game. But he has seemingly so far struggled to impart that knowledge to his charges and may be better suited to his previous role in strength and conditioning.
"Ruben likes to emphasise the importance of the contact," says Taylor. "He is in there with us - it can be hard to teach different techniques so he jumps in to show us and his overall message is all-around attitude.
"It comes back to how hard you want to hit someone. You can make a tackle and that's fine or you can make a tackle - and then he won't play that ball as fast as he normally would."
