They may have taken contrasting paths to reach Saturday night's destination but St George Illawarra claim they and Brisbane are now in the same boat heading into their NRL semi-final.

That's because both face the same scenario at Suncorp Stadium - win and fight another day or lose and go home.

"It's the knockout phase of the tournament and we're still lucky to be a part of it," Dragons hooker Nathan Fien said.

"Everyone's got the same thing to lose this weekend and I guess that's going to add to the occasion.

"The Tigers and the Broncos, even though they had wins, they're still in the same situation as us this weekend."

The Broncos could not have been more impressive in thumping the Warriors 40-10, while the Dragons suffered a second-half meltdown in going down to Wests Tigers 21-12 - the premiers forced to nervously await other results to ensure their survival.

But as far as the Dragons were concerned, little had changed in the challenge that lay ahead.

Even if they had capitalised on their 12-6 halftime lead to beat the Tigers, they would still be playing a sudden-death match this weekend.

"We're pretty determined ... while it was a nervous wait, we're still very confident of what we can do in the competition," Fien said.

"There's two other sides that were bundled out (on the weekend) and fortunately we weren't one of those.

"We definitely needed the footy gods to smile on us and fortunately we get a second chance at it.

"(It's) probably not the ideal circumstances to go into week two but we've got that opportunity now to press on and what better place to play footy than at Suncorp Stadium."

Certainly the Dragons had a spring in their step at Monday's training run in Wollongong. They knew they were fortunate to still have something to train for.

The skills session followed a thorough video review of the loss to the Tigers, but even after watching the performance again, the Dragons denied their confidence had been dented by the defeat.

"Not really - look at our first half, it was pretty good," prop Jon Green said.

"We just didn't show up in the second half.

"We've just got to go back to doing things we've been doing right for the last two and a bit years - if we get all that right we'll be good."

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