Freed from the fear of fighting for his spot every week, St George Illawarra halfback Jamie Soward turned WIN Stadium into his own little playground as he led the Dragons to a 58-16 NRL thrashing of Canberra.

Soward matched Amos Roberts' club record with a personal haul of 22 points, but it was his direction and zip from halfback that most impressed Dragons coach Nathan Brown in the ten tries to three pummelling.

The halves have been a problem for Brown ever since Mark Gasnier went down with a pre-season injury, but on Sunday's form, Soward and Rangi Chase have shown they might just be the answer.

They toyed with a Raiders defence which missed 62 tackles in a performance Canberra coach Neil Henry described as embarrassing.

The magnitude of the win allowed the Dragons to skip ahead of Canberra on the ladder on points differential.

Asked why this type of display wasn't seen early in the season, Brown had a simple answer.

"Jamie Soward was playing for the (Sydney) Roosters at the start of the season and Rangi Chase had a busted finger, he wasn't playing at all," Brown said.

"We didn't have a lot of speed in our halves at times and we also had a lot of young blokes that hadn't played any real first grade.

"Each week they're improving a little bit and they work hard on their game and they're bearing the fruits of that."

And didn't the fruit look ripe as the Dragons ran in tries from all over the paddock.

In the first half they relied on towering bombs in the howling southerly to confuse the Raiders back three with Soward, Dan Hunt, Chase Stanley and Ben Ellis all capitalising to score for a 22-10 lead at the break.

After half-time it was offload after offload as Soward and Chase ran amok, the former Roosters playmaker claiming the confidence shown in him by Brown was coming through in his football.

"(Brown's) been getting me to play a bit more footy ... playing a bit more off the top of my head which I haven't really had before," Soward said.

"He's supporting me and he's just left me in there - he's said 'we're going to stick with you, we're not going to throw you back and mess you around on the bench'.

"It's big for me, being a halfback - you want to be able to go and do what you want to do ... if I see a chip-chase on then I can do it, where as I haven't really had that confidence before."

When Josh Morris scooped up a Nigel Plum fumble before racing 80 metres to score just after half-time the game looked as good as over, before a Todd Carney-inspired comeback threatened to spoil the party.

Carney backed up a Marshall Chalk bust for his second try of the game, but that was all she wrote for the visitors as the Dragons piled on another five tries, including a late double to Chase.

"It's embarrassing - embarrassing for the players the club and the fans that came down to watch us," Henry said.

"They were very hot today, we couldn't stop their offloads and they made the most of our poor defence at times. It'd have to be our worst performance of the year.

"We just couldn't stem the flow ... missing 62 tackles is unacceptable at NRL level."

The Raiders weren't even able to take advantage of what looked like a gaffe from referee Sean Hampstead on the stroke of half-time when he appeared to ignore the siren.

Hooker Ryan Hinchcliffe dived over from dummy half but the try had little impact on the final result.

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP