With the cloud of an assault charge finally evaporated, Benji Marshall produced a masterful performance to guide Wests Tigers into the NRL top four for the first time this year with a 39-10 win over Gold Coast.

Marshall, whose assault charge stemming from an incident in March this year was dismissed in Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday, scored one try and had a leading hand in four others as the Tigers maintained their charge with a seventh straight win.

They are now one short of their club record winning sequence, which was set incidentally during their stunning run to their one and only premiership in 2005.

Needing to win by more than 12 points to leapfrog North Queensland into fourth heading into the last round meeting with Cronulla, the Tigers jumped out to a 20-0 lead before weathering a Titans comeback in running out seven tries to two winners, Marshall earning a early breather ten minutes from time.

The Kiwi skipper was at the heart of everything the Tigers did early, a blazing short side raid setting up Matt Utai's opener before a two-man cut-out pass found Beau Ryan on the opposite side, the winger doing brilliantly to touch down with all but his ball-carrying arm outside the field of play.

He backed-up an Aaron Woods bust to make it 16-0 after 20 minutes, and an out ball to Robert Lui created an overlap which allowed Blake Ayshford to crash over.

Such was the Tigers' dominance at that point that it was scarcely believable that these two sides were the two that bowed out in last year's preliminary finals given the gulf in class.

With a likely wooden spoon shootout with Parramatta looming on Saturday night, the Titans heads appeared elsewhere, but it was the Tigers who were caught napping when Mark Minichiello won the race to a surprise William Zillman grubber.

The blow to the points differential became a lot worse when Marshall added another try assist after the break, this one a beautiful cut-out pass for Titans winger David Mead who took his intercept 55 metres.

At 22-10, the Tigers were back to level with the Cowboys on points differential, and they were lucky to escape when Zillman lost the ball as he reached out to score.

The nerves on the bench finally settled when Lote Tuqiri scored his second try of the year on the hour, the dual international making his third comeback from injury for 2011.

Tim Moltzen and Chris Heighington added two more tries before Robbie Farah slotted a field goal to give the Tigers a 17-point buffer in points differential on the fifth-placed Cowboys.

Tigers coach Tim Sheens said their focus was now to make the top four.

"We're on our way to fourth spot hopefully with a good win next week, that's our focus now, but I'd like to be playing better over the whole 80 minutes," Sheens said.

"The sides we're playing their seasons are over, we're not kidding ourselves, we're going to have to go to a much different level when we play semi-finals."

Like the team's performance as a whole, Sheens said there was room for improvement in Marshall.

"He made some significant plays for the team ... but he also made some plays that he's not happy with when he made the breaks - he made two breaks which came to nothing," Sheens said.

The man himself was just happy to go out onto the field with a clear head.

"Obviously with what happened during the week I was feeling really relieved and just wanted to get back to playing footy," Marshall told Fox Sports.

Rival skipper Preston Campbell was in no doubt however who the difference was on the night.

"That's just the kind of player he is. You give him a lot of ball, he's going to punish you for it," Campbell said.

"He was on tonight, Benji."

Asked whether the turmoil surrounding top two clubs Manly and Melbourne as a result of Friday night's brawl had opened up the premiership race, Sheens said it was too early to write off the highflyers.

"You don't know until you see the suspensions, until you see the ramifications outside of the fines," he said.

"They're going to have some issues but they're strong clubs with strong cultures, I can't see that they won't come fighting out of whatever happens."

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