Defence may be their bread and butter, but St George Illawarra backrower Ben Creagh claims the Dragons have the attacking variety to match it with flair-filled NRL preliminary finals opponents Wests Tigers.

Boasting the stingiest defence in the league at just over 12 points a game during the regular season, it has been widely believed that the Dragons' long wait for a premiership would be built on their ability to hold out opponents.

With the Tigers renowned for their desire to throw the ball, promoters are billing Saturday night's ANZ Stadium tussle as the irresistible force versus the immovable

But Creagh claims the return to the club of former Test centre Mark Gasnier and a willingness to vary the point of attack away from their prolific second-man play on the left edge has the Dragons poised to run up a score of their own.

"We're definitely mixing up our attack more than what we had been doing - we play to the left side a lot with myself, Darius (Boyd), Coops (Matt Cooper) and B Moz (Brett Morris) - Brett was top tryscorer last year and nearly top tryscorer this year so you've got to play to your strengths out there," Creagh said.

"But we're hitting our front rowers in tight and hitting our lead runners more instead of going out the back all the time, we're using our right side.

"We're playing with a bit of variety and scoring a few tries on different sides of the field which is good for everyone's confidence ... that's what we need to do to keep winning so that we're not too predictable."

Gasnier and right side partners Beau Scott and Jamie Soward would no doubt have taken a keen interest in the Tigers' defensive frailties down their edge in last week's win over Canberra.

Raiders backrower Bronson Harrison and centre Joel Monaghan terrorised Robert Lui, Chris Lawrence and Lote Tuqiri - that trio sure to see plenty of traffic again on Saturday night.

On the other side of the field Creagh will no doubt have his sights firmly set on Benji Marshall, with the hope that the extra workload in defence could take the edge off the Kiwi playmaker's sparkling attacking game.

Creagh however denied there was a specific plan to work over Marshall.

"The halves in opposition teams get worked over a little bit by backrowers," Creagh said.

"I'll just play my normal game, I won't be going out of my way to try and target him or anything like that."

The man who will line up alongside Marshall, Blake Ayshford, admits to some bad memories trying to stop Creagh and Cooper.

"I played (Cooper) last year and he put two tries on me," Ayshford recalled of his first duel with Cooper.

"Him and Ben Creagh carved me up a bit. It was only my fourth game and coming up against them was hard."

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