The Dragons were taken down by the defending premier Panthers 40-20 in their final clash of the year in Wollongong on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
A sold-out crowd packed into WIN Stadium for the first leg of the club\u2019s double-header celebrating the annual i98FM Illawarra Convoy.<\/p>\n
It also marked Jack de Belin\u2019s 252nd and final match for the club 14 years on from his NRL debut at the same venue.<\/p>\n
Tom Jenkins went over for the Panthers in the southeastern corner to draw first blood just five minutes in off the back of a slick, left side shift to make it 4-0.<\/p>\n
They extended their lead just shy of the first quarter mark through Paul Alamoti who found himself on the end of a fifth tackle Nathan Cleary cut-out to cross in the right-hand corner and make it a double-digit difference.<\/p>\n
The hosts crafted an answer moments later with Mathew Feagai pouring through to knock a Kyle Flanagan bomb to David Klemmer.<\/p>\n
Klemmer fashioned a pass to front row partner Emre Guler who moved it on to his halfback to dummy and step his way over to the right of the sticks.<\/p>\n
Flanagan converted his own try to cut the deficit back to four points for the Red V.<\/p>\n
The video officials were brought into the game 25 minutes in after Casey McLean attempted a miracle dive in the left-hand corner but was denied by a desperate Hayden Buchanan cover effort.<\/p>\n
The Dragons lost their Captain\u2019s Challenge the next set after Feagai, in similar fashion to the four-pointer he helped lay on, led the chase for an attacking Dragons bomb but was ruled to have taken out a Panther illegally.<\/p>\n
Blaize Talagi went close to nabbing Penrith\u2019s third off a Dylan Edwards grubber only for Jaydn Su\u2019A to produce a brilliant piece of scramble to deny it.<\/p>\n
The Panthers were able to extend their edge however with McLean sending Jenkins into space down the left touchline before finding himself the beneficiary of a grubber back on the inside.<\/p>\n
They notched another prior to the break with Luke Garner slipping through a hole down the right-hand corridor and throwing it back inside to a supporting Nathan Cleary to make it 22-6.<\/p>\n
The first points of the second forty belonged to the Dragons with Corey Allan manufacturing a sensational put-down in the left-hand corner off a pristine Clint Gutherson delivery to cut the deficit back to a dozen.<\/p>\n
The Panthers lost their Captain\u2019s Challenge with a half-hour remaining in an attempt to overturn a ruck penalty instead handing the Dragons a set on the attack.<\/p>\n
Jacob Liddle came up with a one-on-one strip as Penrith carted the ball out of their own end to put his side back on the attack and it proved fruitful with Tyrell Sloan nabbing a try for the Dragons off it.<\/p>\n
Gutherson swept down the right edge, pushed away from McLean, and crafted a brilliant flick to his winger who went over untouched in the corner.<\/p>\n
The Panthers found a needed response on the other side of the hour-mark with Isaiah Papali\u2019i scoring off a crash play to extend their advantage back beyond a pair of converted tries.<\/p>\n
Lindsay Smith went over for the Panthers shortly after to push their lead out to 34-14 with 13 minutes on the clock.<\/p>\n
Jaydn Su\u2019A nabbed a late four-pointer for the hosts after weighting a perfect grubber for Sloan and backing him up on the inside to dive over and bring it back to 34-20.<\/p>\n
Paul Alamoti found a try on the stroke of the full-time siren to seal the win for the visitors a week out from the postseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dragons were taken down by the defending premier Panthers 40-20 in their final clash of the year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-122600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}