Hunt stars again as Dragons keep finals hopes alive with Manly win

The Dragons entered the last chance saloon and came out with their finals hopes just about intact, downing the Manly Sea Eagles 18-6 at a wet and windy Jubilee Oval.

It was hardly a convincing performance – Dragons victories rarely are – but two points was the goal and two points were achieved. They remain in the finals hunt, drawing level with the Sea Eagles on nine wins.

Griffin was given the dreaded vote of confidence this week at a board meeting and will be delighted with his team’s performance.

He is conservative coach at heart, and his team completed high, tackled well and won another close game. Though the score was padded out late by a Mat Feagai try on the ball, there was barely anything in it.

The Dragons set the platform with a dominant first 20 minutes and hung on thereafter in conditions that were never likely to result in many points for either side.

It has been a tough week for the Sea Eagles on the injury front, losing three key players to positive Covid tests before the game even started.

With Jake Trbojevic, Andrew Davey and Lachlan Croker missing, the forward depth was more than tested and would be tested further.

Ben Trbojevic left in the 17^th minute with a head knock and Sean Keppie in the 28^th with a shoulder stinger and then Josh Aloiai late in the piece.

The Dragons, for their own part, lost fullback Cody Ramsey to a medial ligament injury that might well spell the end of his season, pending scans.

Ben Hunt, as he so often is, was their hero, scoring twice and kicking superbly to generate field position. Beyond him it was hard to see a standout, but when he’s in the mood that he has been in this season, it doesn’t always matter.

The Dragons have become experts at wet weather footy and while their focus on high completions can stunt them at times, it suits conditions like those in Kogarah this Friday night.

Early on, they kept the ball, turned it over deep in the Manly end and made their opponents truck it back to them. It wasn’t pretty, and indeed, for all their field position, they never threatened the line, but it accumulated pressure.

When the breakthrough did come, it was more luck than judgement. So often the Dragons’ plan revolves around Hunt doing something spectacular, but even at his most creative, he couldn’t have thought of this: he slipped in front of the line, Manly stopped and he regained his feet to slide through the wet to score.

The pressure built further. Despite losing Ramsey to injury, the wave kept coming and while, again, they looked wholly innocuous with ball in hand, with the boot they were a different proposition.

This time it was Junior Amone who was the creator and Hunt the finisher, the five eighth slipping a kick in behind for his halfback to score.

Manly were struggling to gain any foothold. St George Illawarra had gone through the first 20 minutes with 70% possession and the Sea Eagles had to get funky to break the cycle.

Kieran Foran, on first tackle on his own line, kicked horizontally to Morgan Harper and busted them out of their own end.

From then until half time, there was plenty of grind but minimal quality: Josh Schuster, pushed into service early after a head knock to Ben Trbojevic, was particularly guilty with two errors. The only further scoring was a Zac Lomax penalty goal.