South Sydney coach Jason Demetriou insists the Rabbitohs are not far away from their best despite falling over the line in an error-riddled 26-14 NRL win against St George Illawarra in Cairns.
Two classy try assists in a clinical display from star fullback Latrell Mitchell and another double for prolific winger Alex Johnston helped Souths claim a much-needed win.
Demetriou conceded his side looked sluggish making 15 errors and completing their sets at a woeful 64 per cent, suggesting a busy travel schedule was to blame.
"That's a bit of where we're at at the moment," he said.
"What I was happy with is our resilience and our (defence) ... we dropped some ball in the first half, got off to a great start and then probably overplayed a little bit and came up with some pretty ordinary errors.
"(But) if you keep teams to 14 points we're gonna be hard to beat."
The win didn't come without a scare, the Dragons getting to within six points with 15 minutes to play after halfback Ben Hunt created a try for fullback Tyrell Sloan out of nothing.
Johnston ran away to seal the points soon after for the Rabbitohs.
They leapfrog North Queensland and Newcastle into seventh place on the ladder ahead of the Knights' clash with Canterbury on Sunday and still could claw their way into the top four.
But they didn't look like a premiership contender in a dire first half against the Dragons littered with errors, only hitting the sheds ahead 8-4 having butchered a number of chances to extend that advantage.
Mitchell made two special passes to create tries for Johnston and Cody Walker to build a 20-10 lead, but outside of that his team looked uninspired and were repeatedly turned away in attack.
Hunt, who scored in the second half from a clever Talatau Amone kick, produced his own special grubberkick for Sloan to pull the score back to 20-14 with 15 minutes to play.
The Rabbitohs were shocking in their ball security and made 15 errors to turn in a poor set completion rate of 64 per cent and easily could have been punished if the Dragons hadn't made 11 errors of their own.
They don't play against in-form Newcastle until Sunday next week and Demetriou said the longer rest period was necessary.
"We're at the end of a really long travel period, four in a row now on the road," he said.
"We're not going to Newcastle until Saturday next week so I'm really looking forward to getting back to some time with families, recovering and going off to what's going to be a tough game next week."
St George interim coach Ryan Carr admitted there were some execution errors his side would like a chance to have over, but praised his team's commitment.
"Getting on that plane to come up here, we weren't going to get beat on effort and we weren't gonna get beaten on fight," he said.
"And I don't think we did today in those two areas, which is super pleasing, because people will look at the scoreline and say 'well, you did get beaten', well we didn't get beaten in those two areas, which I'm super proud of."