BERNARD Jackman believes the hard work of his forwards coaches on the set piece means the Dragons now have another weapon in their armoury if the expansive gameplan fails.

The Rodney Parade region stripped their game back to enjoy an Anglo-Welsh Cup win against the Scarlets last Friday, their pack bossing matters to turn a 15-3 half-time deficit into a 23-18 triumph.

They remain a work in progress, and it must be noted that the west Walians fielded a very inexperienced side, but Jackman has been encouraged by the progress made by his charges.

The Dragons head to Dublin to face Guinness PRO14 big guns Leinster on Friday (kick-off 7.35pm) and their head coach is hopeful the pack can stand firm, even without the Wales trio of Leon Brown, Elliot Dee and Cory Hill.

"We didn't really want to play a forward-focused game but the way that we gave the Scarlets two gifts in the first half, we got ourselves in a tricky situation," said Jackman.

"We just needed to find an area of strength and our maul and our scrum have been a massive turnaround this year.

"If you look at the Dragons of last year, with the same personnel we have turned around a scrum that was statistically one of the worst to one that is the best in terms of winning penalties in the PRO14 and we have scored more maul tries than any team in the PRO14.

"We have technically and tactically tightened up our forward play, which Ceri Jones and Rhys Thomas deserve a lot of credit for.

"The players are buying into that and we want to play an all singing, all dancing brand of rugby but if you don't have a pack who can put the squeeze on people then it's pretty hard. The Scarlets game reinforced that.

"It's nice to have a tool in your pocket that if you get yourself into a tough situation you can use it to get dominance."

Jackman has doffed his hat to the forward coaches and also believes the work of defence supremo Hendre Marnitz is coming through.

"Defensively we showed a little bit more line speed, which is important as we go towards December," said the Irishman.

"At the end we had to defend 11 or 12 phases and actually marched the Scarlets back and ended up getting a turnover.

"That's as important as scoring a try for us, we can get a little bit of confidence from that. We could show the players that on a Monday and rather than telling them it can work, they saw it works and can repeat it."