St George Illawarra coach Nathan Brown says Dragons fans have only had a taste of Mathew Head's allround ability despite the newly re-signed halfback playing a starring role in his side's 34-14 win over North Queensland at WIN Stadium.

Head, who agreed to a two-year deal with the joint venture club, was involved everything for the Dragons as he set up four of his side's six tries with a series of clever kicks.

Matt Cooper's NSW Origin hopes also received a boost with the centre crossing for a hat-trick of second half tries.

The Cowboys meanwhile slumped to a sixth loss in a row, their place in the top eight now in jeopardy with the Origin series to continue affecting the club for another few weeks yet.

Brown praised Head's ability to finish off plays, but said the young playmaker, who is only two games back from a long injury layoff, still had a way to go to reach his best.

"He had some good parts and he has some work to do, he knows that," Brown said.

"He had some try involvement and we know the greatest part of his game is he makes the other players look good, he's going to improve a lot."

Brown also urged NSW selectors not to punt on Mark Gasnier to fill the seemingly-vacant Blues No.6 jumper, despite the Test centre exerting a heavy influence on the game from pivot.

Utility Ben Hornby also spent some time at five-eighth to give NSW selectors the unusual dilemma of having two players from the same club vying for the one position.

"I don't think Gaz is a contender at this stage myself," Brown said.

"I'd prefer they leave Gaz in the centres and give Benny a crack at six, he'd do a good job for them... it's just put too much pressure on their kicking game (if they picked Gasnier at five-eighth)."

Gasnier scored the opening points of the night when he capped off a 100-metre movement which was only made possible thanks to winger Colin Best doing tremendously to get a Johnathan Thurston grubber back into the field of play.

The home side soon made it 10-0 when Best took advantage of Head's kick which bamboozled Neil Sweeney with a wicked bounce.

The Cowboys hit back through two soft tries to Matt Sing and Josh Hannay, the veteran centre beating three flimsy Dragons tackles to go over out wide.

A Thurston penalty goal locked it up at 10-10 three minutes after the restart but the parity was short-lived with a sublime Head pass putting Cooper away for his first of the night.

Thurston went within millimetres of a reply when Hornby opted to let a towering bomb bounce with the Cowboys playmaker putting a foot on the touchline as he grounded the ball.

The Cowboys were in shortly afterwards when Sweeney completed the simple task of catching a Thurston kick by falling over to score.

Up by just two, Head again went to work, grubbering for a Gorrell try which broke the back of the Cowboys.

Two more tries to Cooper in the final ten minutes blew the margin out, the Cowboys deserving better than a 20-point loss.

"We competed pretty well but that's the difference between the top sides and (us), we played pretty much a top side tonight," Cowboys coach Graham Murray said.

"I thought we played better tonight than we have in a few weeks, it was quite spirited but we knew it would be a tough assignment coming here."

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