On a day celebrating the 40^th anniversary of the Illawarra Steelers entry into the top flight, the old boys in attendance at the northern end of the ground endured some heart-stopping final moments as the Raiders pushed hard in their direction for a late victory.

It was heart-in-mouth stuff for coach Anthony Griffin when Cody Ramsey spilled a Jamal Fogarty bomb 10 metres out from his own line with just over a minute to go and his side clinging to a two-point advantage.

Ben Hunt could be considered fortunate not have been pinged for being offside at the final play-the-ball, where he forced an error from Tom Starling, but the Dragons held on. It was perhaps one two let-offs, with Mikaele Ravalawa also fortunate not be penalised for seemingly picking up Ramsey's fumble of an earlier kick from an offside position with 17 minutes to play.

Both would have offered the Raiders an opportunity to level the scores had penalties been blown, but Griffin praised his side's composure down the stretch.

"Even though we had the wind I thought they had the better of us in the first half," Griffin said.

"I thought in the first half we got a few penalties and got our field position from their errors and didn't respect the conditions. We were a little bit lateral and didn't have enough physicality in us, they were much more physical than us.

"In the second half, against the wind, we played the type of football we need to play. We killed ourselves with a lot of errors, but our kicking game and our defence at their end of the field... we kept them down their end for long periods of that second half which is how we won the game.

"The boys have worked really hard on our defence over the last three or four weeks because we lost that for a period there. It was a lot easier to defend tonight obviously with the conditions but our intent and our scramble right up to that last set got us home.

"I think if they'd had more good ball against us they might've gotten us but we had to get two points here today and we got those and we'll move on."

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The violent gust played havoc with the composure of both sides in the first half, but it was the Raiders who paid heavily on the scoreboard, with two attempted short dropouts from Jordan Rapana gifting the Dragons points.

That Dragons posted the first try when Jack Wighton inexplicably batted the short restart directly into the arms of Talatau Amone who crossed untouched for a 4-0 lead. Zac Lomax's conversion attempt was waved away but he got a swift opportunity to atone from in front when Rapana's second short dropout seven minutes later failed to travel 10 metres.

It was part of a forgettable afternoon for Wighton who was pushing for an Origin recall after missing Origin II due to COVID. Amone's try was an early blemish, but perhaps more telling blunders came in the second half, notably spilling the ball cold on tackle zero from a scrum 20 metres out from the Dragons line, and failing to find touch on a key penalty inside the final eight minutes.

Both were big let-offs for the Dragons who defended valiantly but offered little in terms of adventure with the football in the second stanza after leading 12-4 at halftime following Moses Suli's 38th minute four-pointer.

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Hudson Young crossed from close-range to bring the visitors within two after 53 minutes but they couldn't produce another point, Hunt's final effort at the last ruck scuppering the Raiders final attempt at a Hail Mary.

"I was briefly worried once I jumped on him," Hunt said.

"I was just panicking I guess. I was the left-side half and I was tackling him around the right-side scrum-line somewhere and just felt I had to do something... I was pretty happy he didn't blow it.

"I thought we defended well for pretty much the whole game on our try-line. Even when Cody dropped that last one I was pretty confident we were going to defend it. I was blowing but still feeling reasonably confident, everyone was scrambling really hard.

"We didn't really capitalise on that wind in that first half, and both teams struggled with it at times with errors and things like that, but the good thing was we defended really well on our line and managed to hold them out.

"It's massive win in the context of the ladder. There's a number of teams around us and they were one of them so you've just got to keep knocking those ones off."

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