Things have now got desperate for the Dragons.
A 22-4 loss to the Storm on Saturday was the Red V's seventh consecutive defeat.
It is now the club's worst losing streak in the history of the joint merger. Indeed you have to go back to 1989 under the banner of the Illawarra Steelers for the last time the club lost this many on the trot.
Another dismal attacking display saw St Goerge-Illawarra fail to reach double digits for points scored for the third consecutive week.
An understandably despondent Paul McGregor dig not have to look far to see the issue with his team in its current state.
"I thought Melbourne gave us a lesson in how to build pressure," McGregor said.
"We are not building any pressure with the ball. Far too many passes hit the deck and obviously we've got a really good intent behind out defence, it's holding up but our attack is the side we need to fix.
"There has got to be a better purpose behind every play instead of just running if you need to."
After a solid start to the game the Dragons could well have opened the scoring on 26 minutes through Jason Nightingale.
However the try was disallowed with Benji Marshall's assist judged to be forward although McGregor questioned the decision after the game – arguing a Storm try to Nelson Asofa-Solomona from a Cameron Smith pass may have come from a forward pass.
"It looked alright to you? It looked alright to me," McGregor said.
"I don't know if Smith's was forward, was it? There's a question mark on his pass on the try line [in the first half] but you can't do much about it, we seem to be on the wrong end of it at the moment."
Top of the table eight weeks ago, the Dragons could now find themselves as low as 10th should the Raiders win on Sunday.
The season will well and truly be on the line next Sunday when Newcastle comes to town; lose that and the Red V will almost certainly be watching finals football from the couch for the fourth straight year.
"There is pressure to win every game – every one you lose you're closer to not making the semi-finals, so for us it's about working really hard on what we didn't do well tonight," McGregor said.
"Going home [next week] we play Newcastle and we need to really work hard to get a result because we are at the critical stage, we need to win games of footy."
