About 50 yards below, three dozen surfers took to choppy six to eight foot swells rolling in from the storm that had touched ground in the Carolinas earlier in the day.
But the Dragons held on to their slender one-point lead for another 20 minutes and eventually got a rolling maul try when they pushed the visiting eight back over their own line, with flanker Sowden-Taylor getting the congratulations from his team-mates.