West Coast Fever coach Dan Ryan says their past month of form is “irrelevant” as their hold on third spot and a vital home final continues to slip from their grasp.

Fever missed a vital chance to lock away a finals berth for a seventh-consecutive season when they lost to the fourth-placed Mavericks 60-57 in front of a record home-and-away crowd at RAC Arena on Saturday night.

They now must beat the winless Giants to secure the top-four spot, but the defeat has left the door open for the Mavericks to surpass them into third and take the opportunity to host the minor semifinal.

Fever were blown away in the first quarter, with Melbourne leading 20-14 at the first break and holding on to claim their seventh win.

Last year’s grand finalists will round out their season with consecutive away trips to take on the Giants and arch-rivals Melbourne Vixens.

Quizzed about his team’s form, Ryan said they would “give it everything” to ensure they finished third and booked a home final.

“We were outstanding against the Firebirds and came into the past week with great confidence in wanting to reproduce that. It wasn’t quite there tonight but it’s not far off either,” he said.

“We look at where we sit on the ladder, still third, two games to go. We’ll do everything we can within our control to finish third and give it everything we’ve got so what’s happened over the past month becomes irrelevant, it’s what we do here and now.

“We were close to winning this game by not even being anywhere near our best and we look forward to getting back out there next week against the Giants.”

Ryan said they would do a lot of work both on and off the court during the week to ensure they are in form headed into finals.

“The job is 24-7, players do everything they need to, and the coaches do everything they need to,” he said.

“It’s not what you do at your four hours of on-court team training that is the job, it’s how we review the team, how we review individual performances, how the players hold accountability for themselves and for each other.

“It’s endless work and the reality is losing games is part of the business. And what you have to make sure you do is take out what’s most important to shift performance the next time.

“The challenge we had over the past four or five weeks was there was a lot of different things that were impacting how we were playing, and the reality is you cannot solve all of them at once.

“We were work all the time on every single factor – the mental, the physical, the psychological, the gameplan – everything. And we’ll keep chipping away until we get to where we want to go to.”