Listless Dragons outgunned by charging Panthers

Last year's grand finalists' looked out of sorts in the first half, barely completing a set through the first 20 minutes, but still led 16-6 at halftime as the Dragons struggled to turn a mountain of possession into more than six points.

Anthony Griffin's side had 10 of the first 13 sets but could produce just the one try... to Brent Naden, who plucked a long ball from Corey Norman out of the air to race 90 metres for the opening try.

Naden had his second following another Norman intercept 12 minutes later and, with Dylan Edwards' 31st minute four-pointer, the Panthers had more points than they had tackles in the Dragons 20 by halftime.

At the other end, the Dragons were tackled 20 times in the Panthers 20, and had 59 per cent of total ball, but looked to be holding a pop-gun in attack barring a piece of individual brilliance from Zac Lomax to lay on Mikaele Ravalawa's 20th minute four-pointer.

It was brief resistance, with the Panthers running in two tries in as many minutes early in the second half to put the game to bed. It ensures they won't drop lower than third on the ladder by season's end, while the Dragons are plummeting in the other direction.

It was another tough loss but Griffin was left fuming with Matt Burton's second-half try that came after Jack Bird spilled the ball in a hit from Cleary that didn't look to have much arm in it.

"It was a clear-cut shoulder charge," Griffin said.

"That's the one they brought the rule in for where you don't use your arms. Mika Ravalawa's had three suspensions this year for hitting blokes around the belly button and not using his arms. That's a try-scoring situation, there's vision that they had to go back and watch so I don't know how they cleared that.

"It's a massive play, it was six points against the run of play and unfortunately that was our night. We came here and played a really high-intensity game for 80 minutes but intercepts and a couple of calls like that... it makes it hard.

"I thought all night we came at the game pretty well but that [Naden] intercept was massive, a 12-point turnaround. They were pretty good a couple of times but I thought the scoreline was a bit tough on us.

"The way the game went they just got their points a little easy at times and there were a couple of dodgy calls there, particularly Cleary's shoulder charge on Jack Bird. How that gets awarded a try, I don't know."

Despite being just one win outside of finals contention, Griffin's men have won just four of their last 16 games and haven't beaten a team in the top eight since round five.

They're also yet to win a game since the infamous protocol-flouting barbecue that derailed their season six weeks ago. Despite all efforts to get past it, it remains fixed in the rear-view mirror and following them down the stretch of the regular season.

It won't disappear until they notch a win and, with the Roosters, Cowboys and Rabbitohs looming, there's every chance it won't come before the season's out.

Worse still, with skipper Ben Hunt still missing with a fractured arm, the Dragons lost stand-in captain Andrew McCullough to a syndesmosis injury midway through the second half.

"[McCullough's] no good, he's in a boot already," Griffin said.

"It didn't look good, hopefully it's not as bad as what it looked but he's in a fair bit of bother at the moment."

In a round about way, it provided the only silver lining to the defeat, with Talatau Amone injected into the halves to lay on a try for Jack Bird and score on of his own in a 20-minute second-half cameo. It made a compelling case for a start next week with the club's finals flame extinguished.

"That's what I like, he goes to the game," Griffin said.

"He's a really lovely kid, he's a classy footballer. We've played him in the centres, today we threw him in at five-eighth which is his natural position he's come through in the juniors. He's got that touch of class about him.

"Against a really good team he set a couple of line-breaks up and scored one himself. With him and [Jayden] Sullivan, [Tyrell] Sloan and [Cody] Ramsey, they're guys we've got coming through our club and it's a good shot in the arm for him to go out there and do that against a really good team when the team was on the back foot. He did a good job I thought."

Naden's long range effort opened the scoring, with Cleary nailing the conversion from out wide for a 6-0 lead after 14 minutes.

The lead belied a start that saw the Panthers complete just two of their first seven sets, with an error opening the door for Ravalawa's try off a brilliant flick pass off-load in traffic from Lomax. He converted to square the ledger at six apiece.

Another poor pass from Norman saw Naden post his second second try on his side's second trip to the Dragons end of the park.

Edwards grabbed their third in as many trips after Ravalawa spilled a Jarome Luai bomb on his own 20-metre line. Cleary converted for a 16-6 lead at the break.

Tries to Edwards and Burton in the 51^st and 53^rd minutes' put the game to bed at 28-6, with tries to Bird and Amone adding mere respectability to the final scoreline.