When the their opposition lost six of their biggest stars to disciplinary measures, the punters agreed.

And yet, the Dragons came back from New Zealand without the two points after going down 26-10 to the Warriors in round nine.

With their finals chances balanced on a knife edge, it was a two points they could ill-afford to let slip.

The same can be said for their last start loss to the Rabbitohs where they led 12-4 moments before the break only be overrun 34-24 by fulltime.

The Dragons were missing a few big guns of their own against the Warriors that day but they’ll have no such excuse when they take on a heavily depleted Cowboys outfit at WIN Stadium on Saturday.

They will be without Josh Dugan but the Cowboys will be missing Jonathan Thurston, Michael Morgan, Matt Scott, James Tamou and Justin O’Neil.

It should give the Dragons an edge but veteran flyer Jason Nightingale said his side has reflected on the Warriors loss to guard against any complacency.

“It definitely is an opportunity for us,” Nightingale said.

“But they’ll have a lot of guys in their team who are getting their chance and as much as we see it as an opportunity I’m sure they do as well. 

“I’m sure their whole club wants to show what they’ve got because they’re going to have a couple of games like this without their Origin players.

“We need to wary of their energy and we can’t be complacent in any areas.

“We’ve spoke about the last time we had a [similar] opportunity which was against the Warriors and they turned up and got the points on us there.

“I think we turned up thinking it was going to be easy and it certainly wasn’t that.

“That’s a big part of our preparation this week, focusing on ourselves and making sure that we don’t let this chance slip because we do need to get back in that eight.”