While disappointed in the Sheffield Shield loss to Queensland, Western Australia captain Marcus North is backing his side's fighting qualities after a final day when only Luke Pomersbach stood up.
While Pomersbach's century showed terrific fight, North has strongly defended any claim that the rest of his team needs to find more tenacity when the going is tough.
"Luke batted in typical Luke style, which is backing himself and taking the game on. He batted beautifully and that’s very encouraging, but it's disappointing that it seems that only one of us gets runs at a time. That's something that we are aware of and are looking to correct," he said.
"Luke showed a lot of fighting spirit and if you look back at previous innings we have shown plenty of that spirit. I felt that myself and Paul Davis fight bloody hard to get to 200 on the first innings when we could have been 100 behind."
"We won the game against Tasmania when myself and Theo Doropoulos fought hard, so that spirit is certainly there. We've also seen (Steve) Magoffin make 79 and while it would have been nice to see more of it this game, they took the momentum and finished us off."
WA needed 324 to win on the final day at the WACA but only Pomersbach looked good at the crease with 104. Despite that, North isn’t concerned after his side won the first two Shield games of the season and believes it was dropped catches more than anything that cost his side.
"We went into this game wanting to get the six points but four days have now passed and we've been outplayed by Queensland. It's a minor hiccup, though, as we still have 12 points and are playing good cricket. This one got away from us and we just have to dust ourselves off," North said.
"We missed some opportunities in the field which proved costly and myself dropping (Ryan) Broad twice before he was 30 and then seeing him make 118 was big in the context of the game. This is first-class cricket and if you give the opposition a chance they usually take it, which Queensland did."
Luke Ronchi continued his struggles with the bat as well making just two and six, but his captain has faith that he will soon turn it around.
"He is working hard in the nets and hitting the ball well so it would not surprise me if he came out Wednesday and got a big score," he said.
"Consistency has probably never been his strong point, but I'm sure sooner or later we will see the best of Luke Ronchi. I don’t think he needs to change his game. I go through lean spells and play completely different to him, so I'm sure he will find some runs before too long."