COWBOYS under-20s coach Aaron Payne hopes players stood down for a breach of team protocol will learn a valuable lesson after their absence sparked a shock 26-20 loss to Wests Tigers on Saturday.

Enari Tuala, Emry Pere, Corey Horsburgh, Duarne Dempsey and Michael Carroll were all dumped from the team named during the week, while Connor Luhan was also punished.

Payne declined to elaborate on the incident which broke team standards, but it is understood they were sanctioned for ignoring a rule to not drink after a recent game on the Gold Coast was postponed.

“We’re a successful club because we have high standards, and a couple of guys just didn’t met those,” Payne said.

“It’s a learning curve for those young men and the group collectively came up with what’s acceptable, and what’s not.

“Those guys I’m sure are disappointed they missed footy and hopefully they learned from their mistakes and we don’t see it again.

“They’ll be aware they’ve let their teammates down, not just off the field but on the field by not being there.

“They’re available for selection next week.”

Penrith’s NRL side made a similar stance this week by dropping big names Matt Moylan, Peta Hiku and Waqa Blake for Friday’s clash with Souths, which they lost by a point.

The Cowboys were previous unbeaten before the loss, and Tigers had only won one of their previous five games.

Despite fielding a depleted side, the Cowboys led with half an hour remaining but some errors gifted the Tigers opportunities to finish strongly.

“We just didn’t play smart, we played dumb footy.,” Payne said.

“We had opportunities to build pressure and shut them out of the game, but we let them back into it.

“We were going away from our structures and had some poor ends to our sets and some high balls we should have taken.

“We weren’t good enough to put them away when we had the momentum.”