St George Illawarra coach Nathan Brown refused to lay the blame at the feet of the video referee after a pair of controversial calls all but ended the Dragons' NRL finals hopes in a thrilling 28-24 loss to the Bulldogs at WIN Stadium.

The home side led for all but four minutes before being run down by the Bulldogs, who stole the two points when Trent Cutler capitalised on a Josh Morris fumble to go over with four minutes remaining.

But the turning point came five minutes earlier with the Dragons holding a 24-16 lead and seemingly headed for their first win over the Bulldogs in six attempts.

Taking the ball from a scrum close to his own line, Ben Creagh was confronted by Sonny Bill Williams who stole the ball from the Dragons lock before racing away to score.

The Dragons argued that Brad Morrin had also been involved in the tackle to make it an illegal strip, but referee Tim Mander gave the Bulldogs the benefit of the doubt.

It followed another benefit-of-the-doubt call just before half-time when Hazem El Masri was ruled to have correctly grounded the ball to leave the visitors just 14-4 down at the break.

"Look at the scoreboard, she's a try (and) there's not much I can do about that now," Brown said.

"I'm more disappointed with the things that we didn't do as opposed to what happened anywhere else.

"I just thought we had some opportunities where we could have taken the benefit of the doubt decisions out of play and we didn't do that."

Creagh too refused to blame Mander, but held back when asked if he thought there were two in the tackle.

"I'm not going to criticise the referee, he made a decision and what's done is done," he said

"It was poor by me, I really wasn't ready for a strip. All credit to him .. they got me with that."

Bulldogs coach Steve Folkes was glad to take the two points, which secures his side's place in the top eight for another week at least.

But already without international props Mark O'Meley and Willie Mason, he could now be without Andrew Ryan after he was put on report for a first-half high tackle on Jason Ryles.

"It's been a while since we've had that sort of luck so we'll certainly take it," Folkes said.

"While we weren't that flash ... we were close enough. They played well but they just didn't play well enough to put us away.

On the Williams try, Folkes said: "It's a split decision I guess.

"If he awarded it no try we probably would have been dirty.

"Obviously by the reaction of some of the crowd they're obviously dirty about it being awarded."

The late drama took the gloss off what was a stellar comeback from the Bulldogs, after they were down 14-0 early through tries to Beau Scott, Matt Copper and Keith Lulia before El Masri struck just before the break.

It took the Bulldogs less than 90 seconds to hit back after the half-time break when El Masri went over under the posts for his second four-pointer, the two sides then trading tries before Cooper's second of the night establishing a 24-16 lead.

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