Dragons 12 Raiders 19

CANBERRA believe that winning their remaining five home games will ensure them a place in the finals. Yesterday's rare away victory, of course, did them no harm.

Before the impressive defeat of St George Illawarra at WIN Stadium, the Raiders had identified the need to win six of their next nine games if they were going to make the play-offs, and the round of upsets at the weekend has made that equation even more likely.

With the Dragons, Broncos, Panthers and Eels all losing, the Raiders are just one point outside the top eight and four behind the fifth-placed Titans - one of their coming opponents at Canberra Stadium.

After hosting the Roosters next Sunday, Canberra have home games against the Titans, Penrith, Newcastle and the Bulldogs, while they will travel to play Brisbane, Souths and the Cowboys.

"You could say our run-in is not too bad that way," Canberra coach Neil Henry said. "In terms of home games, it's pretty good and we've got to turn that into an advantage for us by playing some good footy, but certainly we're in the mix.

"In the context of where we are in the season, today was a very, very important two points. I think finding ourselves away from home has been an issue for us but we've had three wins now [on the road] and we've only got another three away games to go."

Whether the Raiders are good enough to go any further is debatable but Henry pointed out that they had only just begun to regain a number of players from injury and he said their previous match against Melbourne showed they could match it with the top teams.

"Manly have only used 23 players whereas the Bulldogs have used 35 players, so injuries do play a role in the depth of a club and we've had three anterior cruciates [injuries], but we've got guys coming back now," he said. "We've actually had four or five back in the past two weeks.

"I still think there's a gap to bridge between those top three sides and the rest of us - you've got the breakaway group at the top and we're all jockeying for positions behind them. There's no easy game, you can't take any game lightly but the ball is in our court, the game's are there to win and if we're good enough and we apply ourselves, hopefully we'll sneak in the eight."

While the final score suggested a hard-fought win against the Dragons, Canberra led 18-0 just after half-time and 19-6 until the final play of the game, when Mark Gasnier put Brett Morris over in the corner. After being named in the centres, Gasnier spent most of the match defending on the right wing and playing fullback in attack - a move that provided mixed results.

Able to get far more involved than if he had been confined to his usual position of left centre, Gasnier proved a handful to the Canberra defence in the opening 10 minutes - but he was badly caught out of position when former Dragon Colin Best ran 70 metres to score in the 14th minute.

"I wouldn't say I was caught entirely out of position, I was hovering [between the two positions] the whole time and I thought they were going to kick so I was back - maybe a bit too early," Gasnier said. "I was sitting on a 40:20 kick but I still missed him cold in the end."

After prop Dane Tilse and winger Adrian Purtell also crossed in the first half, the Raiders were unhappy to have another try disallowed just before the interval - particularly after video referee Graeme West gave the Dragons' Jason Nightingale the benefit of the doubt in the 51st minute.

CANBERRA 19 (A Purtell 2 C Best D Tilse tries T Carney goal, field goal) bt ST GEORGE ILLAWARRA 12 (J Morris B Morris tries J Soward 2 goals) at WIN Stadium. Referee: T De Las Heras. Crowd:  14,040.