Lions would be the least trendy of the South African sides, however they led 13-12 at half-time regardless of a yellow card.
They arrived in Newport unbeaten, after wins over Ulster and Edinburgh, and struck first by Horn of their opening away sport of the season.
Dragons recalled Leon Brown, Rodrigo Martinez, Keddie, Joe Westwood and Ewan Rosser, a late substitute for his brother Jared, and all had been within the thick of the motion.
Keddie intercepted Steyn’s move and galloped 70 metres upfield, out-sprinting the fly-half, to degree the scores.
Westwood was amongst many to learn from the dealing with abilities of Owen however was additionally amongst these responsible of losing probabilities by coughing up possession.
It was from Owen’s half-break that Lions hooker Franco Marais was sin-binned for kicking the ball out of Rhodri Williams’ fingers.
And simply seconds later, Dragons capitalised with a driving maul completed by Basham, scoring for the second sport in a row.
Basham and Martinez each conceded penalties – harshly in Martinez’s case – to offer Lions the narrowest of leads on the break which was worn out inside moments of the restart.
Rosser earned a penalty from which Ben Carter and Lewis-Hughes edged shut, earlier than Basham confirmed actual energy to get by a crowd of legs to attain.
However once more self-discipline and a few desperately drained tackling undermined Dragons, and not using a win over South African opposition for greater than 4 years.
Substitute fly-half Nohamba kicked three factors earlier than flanker Cairns swatted off Westwood and stepped out of Angus O’Brien’s sort out to attain Lions’ essential second attempt.
Dragons coach Dai Flanagan recognised the necessity to clean up and drafted on 5 replacements within the area of some minutes, together with prop Cameron Jones for his debut.
However Reed’s try to shut the hole to some extent was as shut as Dragons got here late on as Lions, who’ve solely misplaced two of 13 conferences with Welsh groups, closed out a scoreless closing half-hour.