After soaking up the intense pressure applied by the Dragons in the opening 10 minutes, the Raiders response was stunning.

They exploded into life with three first half tries, before finishing 19-12 winners.

Dragons coach Nathan Brown admitted the team lacked intensity, chasing a club record eighth consecutive NRL victory.

"It wasn't that, all of a sudden, we were terrible," he said.

"We were a touch down in intensity, we trained like it during the week and carried it into the game. We weren't quite good enough and they played really well."

Winger Colin Best, who scored four tries in a rout of the Bulldogs just two weeks ago, continued his hot streak when he blazed through the Dragons defence and sprinted 70m to open the scoring in the 13th minute.

Prop Dane Tilse made a powerful run to the tryline five minutes later and after Adrian Purtell barged over to finish off a Joel Monaghan break in the 24th minute, the Dragons were shell-shocked.

Purtell was centimetres from a double before the break when video referee Graeme West denied him a try in the right corner, but he produced his second in the 43rd minute after a brilliant offload by Trevor Thurling.

It was 18-0 when Josh Morris finally put points on the board for the Dragons, but even that was dubious after it appeared Jason Nightingale had pushed the ball forward into Morris' arms as they both dived to the ground.

Canberra halfback Todd Carney's 71st minute field goal sealed a deserved victory, before fullback Brett Morris flattered the Dragons with a last minute try to reduce the margin to seven.

Brown declared that the team needed to lift for next Monday's showdown with premiers Melbourne at Olympic Park, or heads would roll.

"Next week we go to Melbourne with a pretty clean slate because everyone's built up some nice brownie points," he said.

"The money's out of the bank now, so next week she's back to square one. If some blokes turn up like they did today they won't be there the following week, it's as simple as that."