Gold Coast Titans coach Garth Brennan will mark his side's 26-14 loss to the North Queensland Cowboys in Townsville as a missed opportunity, lamenting their ill-discipline and poor ball-control.

Brennan labelled his squad a "dumb football team" at times, as they failed to stick to their game plan, a frustration compounded by their late surge in which they scored two tries that were too late to save them from defeat.

"Errors, discipline, not sticking to what we trained all week to do, it's very disappointing," Brennan said.

Brennan is confident the Titans will push most teams if they can play 80 minutes of solid football, rather than clocking on for a blistering final ten minutes.

"I can't fault the effort, they never gave up, they started to do things we spoke about in the last 10 or 15 minutes and it worked," he said.

Match highlights: Cowboys v Titans – Round 7, 2018

The real problem for the Titans was their ineffectual attack which, if it wasn't shut down by an unimaginative final pass or kick, came up short with an unforced error.

Brennan was also disappointed with his side's inability to tough it out in defence.

"We've got to be a mentally stronger team than we are at the moment, we're fit, we never give up... but we're a dumb football team at times as well," he said.