He may no longer be the man at St George Illawarra, but there appears little doubt former Test star Mark Gasnier will again be the centre of attention in Saturday night's NRL preliminary final against Wests Tigers.

Gasnier has enjoyed a hold over the Tigers like no other player in the game, having scored 18 tries in 11 matches against the merged club since 2002.

It's the type of dominance that would make you think Gasnier would be option No.1, 2 and 3 in the Dragons attack in the grand final qualifier at ANZ Stadium, but the Dragons of 2010 are a far different outfit to the ones of previous campaigns.

Prior to his 18-month sojourn in rugby union, Gasnier used to be the Dragons' focal point in attack, the team's main avenue for points on the back of his trademark `shimmy-shimmy-woosh'.

Now he plays second fiddle to the potent left edge - where the likes of Brett Morris, Darius Boyd, Matt Cooper and Ben Hornby have developed a killer combination.

And despite taking a little time to get used to it, it's a situation he welcomes as he eyes a first premiership.

"It's funny, because some people say `you didn't touch the ball that much on the weekend, is everything alright, what's going on?'" Gasnier told AAP.

"Because we've got so much strike all over the field and the balance of the team is spread out, sometimes you're not required to do certain things, you might not need to push passes ... you just need to fit into the team and do what's required of you.

"I think that's still something I'm getting used to."

Gasnier has slowly been increasing his output in recent weeks, with tries in three of his last five matches.

Given his strike rate against the Tigers, and the slipshod defensive efforts of the Tigers' left edge pair of Chris Lawrence and Robert Lui in last week's tight win over Canberra, you would expect him to get plenty of opportunities to shine on Saturday night.

But Dragons skipper Ben Hornby denied there would be a specific plan to target either edge.

"We're not going in with any preconceived ideas about where we're going to attack or who we're going to attack," Hornby said.

"We want to try and spread it as evenly as we can give both sides the ball, that's obviously going to make it a little bit harder for them.

"Gaz is playing some great footy and scoring some tries so I'd say he'll get a fair bit of ball too."

While Lawrence, Lui and winger Lote Tuqiri no doubt would have had plenty of tackling practice in the lead-up to the game, Tigers coach Tim Sheens said he was expecting the trio to build on performance - particularly Lawrence after his earlier than expected return from a broken jaw.

"I think he was a bit tentative there's no doubt," Sheens said.

"Robert Lui carried an injury through the second half and playing side by side that caused a little bit of an issue on that side and young Bronson (Raiders backrower Bronson Harrison) had a field day there for a little while."

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