Maligned Dragons pack won't be bullied: Lawrie

It's a very much new-look pack, with Tyson Frizell heading a long list of high profile departures and un-availabilities.

James Graham and Korbin Sims moved on over the off-season, while Jack de Belin remains stood down amid his ongoing criminal case. Cam McInnes has also played his last game for the club after tering his ACL in the preseason.

Poasa Faamausili and Daniel Alvaro joined the club over the off-season, but a Charity Shield pasting at hands of the Rabbitohs led many to suggest the pack was not up to NRL standard heading into round one.

Lawrie said it was talk the club's big men took exception to ahead of their season-opener.

"Everyone's backing us out and saying our forward pack's weak," Lawrie said.

"I personally took offence to it and I know a lot of the other boys took offence to it as well. We need to go out there and prove ourselves and show we're not pushover.

"There's no more excuses [for me] now, I've played over 50 games. It's time to step up and start being the force the Dragons want me to be and, as a pack collectively, we've got to make it personal for the opposition each and every week.

"We've got guys who can score tries from anywhere, so it comes down to how bad we want to get over the opposition forwards every week."

The mentality was on show when Matt Dufty was felled by a nasty swinging arm from Jesse Ramien that saw him slapped with a reckless high tackle charge.

Read more: Five things we learned from the Dragons loss to the Sharks

It sees the Sharks centre - ironically a mate of Lawrie's - facing a possible four weeks on the sideline. The melee that followed wouldn't have had namesake Steve 'Blocker' Roach out of his chair on the Fox call, but Lawrie says he couldn't let it slide.

"I saw the high shot on Duf and said 'that's not on'," Lawrie said.

"I'm actually good mates with Jesse Ramien, I've got no bad feeling against him, but Duf's my teammate. I go out to battle with him every week and I've got to back him up.

"If I don't have his back, he has no confidence in me to get him going forward. As long as he knows I've got his back, I know he's got mine."

It was a flashpoint in a disappointing opening half for the Dragons that saw them trail 14-0 in the wert conditions. They built some momentum, particularly through the middle, in the second stanza and Lawrie feels it was a step forward despite the result.

"We're not happy with the result but there were a lot of positives to take out of the game," Lawrie said.

"The defensive effort was there where it hasn't been there in the last couple of seasons. We got energy from each other in that second half.

"A couple of 50-50 calls didn't go our way but, overall, we have a lot of building blocks in place and it was a good bounce back after the Charity Shield because we were pretty disappointing there.

"There were some positives but, in saying that, we didn't get the job done so it wasn't good enough and we've got things to improve on against the Cowboys this week.

"It's their first home game of the year so they'll come out firing and we lost in round one, so we want to win as much as they do."