Souths shatter Dragons’ dreams

ST GEORGE Illawarra’s NRL finals hopes are on life support after South Sydney snatched a come-from-behind 26-24 win against their traditional rivals at the SCG last night.

The Dragons appeared home when Nene Macdonald crossed to give them a 10-point lead with 10 minutes remaining. But the Rabbitohs scored two tries in the final five minutes and halfback Adam Reynolds nailed a sideline conversion to steal a famous win.

The defeat for the Dragons opens the door for ninthplaced Penrith to move into the top eight should it beat Wests Tigers.

Paul McGregor’s side has now lost four of its past five games.

Compounding the heartbreaking loss — its second straight to a bottomeight team after last week’s upset to Newcastle — was a first-half ankle injury to star Josh Dugan.

The pressure of the finals race seemed all too much for the Dragons from the start after committing six errors in their opening 12 sets to be down 12-6 at the 23-minute mark.

Jason Nightingale opened the scoring, however the Rabbitohs responded with back-to-back tries to Alex Johnston and Damien Cook. SOUTH SYDNEY 26 (D Cook, B Goodwin, A Johnston, J Sutton tries, A Reynolds 5 goals) d ST GEORGE ILLAWARRA 24 (N MacDonald, K Mann, J Nightingale, J Thompson tries, G Widdop 4 goals) at Sydney Cricket Ground. Crowd: 12,312.