Arthur keen to see new halves combination develop

Jaeman Salmon made a seamless transition to five-eighth last week for injured Dylan Brown and Parramatta coach Brad Arthur is looking forward to seeing his new halves combination continue to blossom.

After battling it out over the first three rounds of the competition, Brown is set to spend indefinite time on the sideline with bone bruising to his lower back that hasn’t settled from their trial match against the Panthers.

Arthur said the club have no intentions of rushing back the 18-year-old and that it will be a good opportunity for Mitch Moses and Jaeman Salmon to build continuity.

"It's going to take a bit of time, there's no rush,” Arthur said.

"Until he is pain free we won't get him back doing too much training.

"It will be nice to get some good consistency with those guys (Moses and Salmon) for a good period of time.

"Jaeman was good last week. He didn't over-play his hand, he pushed around the football and done his job defensively for us.”

Arthur was also impressed with Moses' performances over the opening four rounds, saying the most pleasing aspect was seeing the halfback's running game return in last week' 24-12 win over the Sharks.

"He's (Moses) been composed - he's delivered and stuck to the plan for the entire 80 minutes,” Arthur said.

"Last week he started to bring back his running game which was good. It's hard at times when he's trying to control and run the team, he sometimes forgets about his own game but last week he got the balance right."

Parramatta travel to Canberra for Sunday night's clash with the Raiders and Arthur will be hoping to get his first win at GIO Stadium.

Arthur said defence has been one of their primary focuses in the lead up to Sunday’s match.

"I think we've been strong through the middle third of the field and it's an area that we will look to make sure we do the same again this week,” he said.

"We've done a lot of week on our defence this week because we've gone to sleep in periods of the game where we've allowed some tries that I would call soft.

"If you go to sleep against the Raiders they'll catch you out. They just keep competing until they get what they need.”