Unfortunately for the Dragons, premierships are seen by most as the ONLY sign of success for an elite football club.
Premierships are bloody hard to win and you can be unlucky enough to be at a consistently strong level over many years, only to find other sides continually rising and falling (and just happening to be that bit ahead of you during their rising moments).
Nathan Brown was correct when he said that the club just had to keep ploughing away and hoping that the planets would eventually align for it.
The Dragons remain consistently at the right end of the table because they live within their means and run probably the strongest juniors system in the game. They run with a home grown first policy that privileges players from their junior ranks and have done so well with this that the scavenger clubs invariably throw big money at Dragon youngsters, driving up their price, and forcing consistent list turnover at the club each year.
By way of contrast, the last time the Dragons pirated a big name from an opposition club was when they snared ageing great, Steve Rogers from Cronulla in 1983 (they did get Martin Offiah in the late 80s, but he was a British player snared from a British club).