The Tigers boss insists it's time Castleford lose their tag as Super League's nearly-men by starting to turn narrow defeats into victories.
It follows Saturday's last-gasp defeat at Headingley where weakened Leeds crossed twice in the final 14 minutes to snatch an 18-12 win.


By Matterson's own admission, it was another opportunity missed and the Cas boss wants his players to develop a winning habit for the final eight games of the campaign - starting against Hull KR (kick-off 12 noon).
The Robins, who won 20-4 at Craven Park in mid-March, have lost their last five matches and need a win to revive their flagging play-off hopes.


Said Matterson: "They went into the market heavily and certainly at the start of the season had put some good form together. They've struggled recently but they've got some quality players and I'm sure they;ll have pencilled this one as a winnable game.'
"They've got plenty to play for but we have too. Time's getting away - there's only eight games left - and four at home. We've got to make those count. There have been a lot of 'could haves' and 'ifs' this year. Of eight games that we've had a really good shout to win, we've won only two. That's not enough.


"We need wins under our belt and we've got the opportunity to do that this week."
Matterson believes a lack of experience and individual mistakes are costing Cas dear: "We work on scenarios for when we're in those situations but you can only do so much in training to prepare you for that.
"Under pressure situations and when they're tired, our lack of experience is really telling. I've got no doubt we're missing Gutts (Awen Guttenbeil). He's our pack leader and our talker, the guys are looking at each other at times for others to do it, instead of doing it themselves.


"We've got to make sure in those situations that we get the ball to our best ball-handlers, Dorn and Sherwin. At crucial stages that's not happening.
"Individual errors are also costing us at times. A big play at the weekend was when they put a bomb up and it was just about to go dead, then bounced just inside the goal-line and they win a drop-out.


"We catch that ball on the full and we're not in that situation.
"We created a lot of try-scoring chances but could not finish them off. At 10-0 we had a good set, chipped over and nearly scored in the corner. It was a lovely play, at worse we finish five metres off their goal-line but they came down our end 70 metres. That was a bit of a momentum-turner."


Matterson has little scope to make changes, with Guttenbeil, Scott Moore, Mark Leafa and Ryan Clayton all set to miss out and Aussie Mitchell Sargent 'unlikely' to arrive in time, a spokesman said yesterday afternoon.
It is a month since Castleford signed the 28-year-old prop from Newcastle Knights but he is still awaiting clearance from immigration officials Down Under.
Centre Kirk Dixon, who has sat out the last two matches with a broken thumb has a chance of returning.