St George Illawarra exorcised the demons of last season's early playoff exit with a 28-22 come-from-behind victory over Cronulla in a spiteful NRL qualifying final at WIN Stadium.

The Dragons did it the hard way as they battled back from an eight-point second half deficit, the victory only confirmed six minutes from time when Wes Naiqama went over in the corner, sending the ground record 19,608-strong crowd into a frenzy.

The Dragons will now have next week off before a preliminary final in two weeks time.

Despite pre-match predictions of a Dragons cakewalk, it was the Sharks who were full of running early in the game.

Winger Luke Covell made up for an earlier error when he outleapt opposite Colin Best to take a Brett Kimmorley cross-field kick before acrobatically passing to rookie centre Beau Scott, who dived over to score after 12 minutes.

It didn't take long for the Dragons to hit back and they did so in almost identical fashion, with Best redeeming himself as he timed his run perfectly to score off a Trent Barrett cross-field chip in the 18th minute.

Their good work was undone by an error from the restart, with Jason Ryles stepping on the dead-ball line from the kick-off, which instigated a sustained period of dominance from the Sharks, with Kimmorley's short kicking game giving the visitors several repeat sets.

For all their field position the Sharks couldn't get over the line, but a boilover was on the cards when David Simmons scored a freakish try four minutes after the break.

David Peachey toed through a lose ball, which was fumbled on his own line by Clint Greenshields, with Matt Hilder tapping the ball back to Simmons who raced around to improve the angle, with Covell's second conversion making it 12-4.

But the Dragons hit back, and how.

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