The shock 17-8 loss at The Burrow stunned the Roos faithful, who went into the match with high hopes after good wins against Bathurst and Narromine to open their 2016 Blowes Clothing Cup campaign.

An early Anthony Golding try was followed by a penalty, and at 8-0 the game was going to script but a try to the hosts right on half-time switched the momentum of the contest.

With a strong home crowd behind them Mudgee simply out-enthused the Roos, scoring 10 unanswered points in a second stanza that shocked the perennial finalists.

But McHugh is adamant his side can turn things around.

"The first 10-20 minutes we stuck to our gameplan and I think we got into that mindset that it was just going to happen for us," McHugh said.

"They got desperate from that point and we didn't. They played out a strong 80 minutes and I think we will learn a lot from that.

"We were speaking about it behind the posts when they scored but couldn't get ourselves into it mentally. We probably panicked a bit and were trying to score off every run instead of setting up our play but the good thing is we know what we did wrong, Mudgee were just better than us on the day.

"I have to give credit to Mudgee. To see where they were when they came in from Graincorp Cup to where they are now is a real credit to their club."

While the result didn't go their way, there were plenty of positives for the Roos as they head into a clash with the winless Parkes at No.1 Oval this Saturday.

"Our defence was pretty good, even though it might not seem like it," McHugh said.

"They pretty much had three chances and were good enough to score each time, for the most part we held them well.

"The other good thing was that our front-row played well, particularly around scrum time.

"We lost a bit of lineout ball and we did panic a bit but they are things we can work on and hopefully turn around pretty quickly because I think we're a good enough team to be right up there this season.

"Next week is big for us. There's a general bye coming up after it so if we can get a bit of confidence back going into that break I think it will help us a lot."