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A good article about our team and coach.

TheRev

Coach
Messages
10,844
Re Toby. I actually think he does bend the line with his leg speed and subtle swerve / step and poked his nose through a few times. An offload if he can create one would be gold because we need to start creating 2nd phase on the move and if so we could really carve some teams up but ATM we have nil, maybe instructions..not sure
Agree, I was looking at their size, a couple more kilos and they wont be far off fmolo and sele etc.. but with a whole bunch more upside... they will never be the 110-120kg big boys.. thats what flanno is trying to recruit.. but in the modern game they might be the perfect size tbh.. and like you say they love an offload if we want to go down that path.

I am curious whether they are wanting to wait till next year to extend or if we will have it wrapped up before November.. maybe they see their value as rising based on first grade games they play this year.
 

Changa

Juniors
Messages
455
Content wise, the article is 'good', but for a journalist, it's terribly written.

Someone should show that bumbling drunk how to use AI and save himself further embarrassment, at least for his written structure. I doubt the robots can do much to save his weekly embarrassments on NRL360.
 
Last edited:

since77

Juniors
Messages
2,344
Re Toby. I actually think he does bend the line with his leg speed and subtle swerve / step and poked his nose through a few times. An offload if he can create one would be gold because we need to start creating 2nd phase on the move and if so we could really carve some teams up but ATM we have nil, maybe instructions..not sure
Agree I've seen Toby bend the line a few times. Impressive for a young fella. He does actually have an offload in him - I've seen a few from him this season. Needs to pick his times as he gets more experience, one caused an error a few games back.
 

TheRev

Coach
Messages
10,844
Agree I've seen Toby bend the line a few times. Impressive for a young fella. He does actually have an offload in him - I've seen a few from him this season. Needs to pick his times as he gets more experience, one caused an error a few games back.
Both couchies can get an arm free like its noones business.. its actually more an issue that the rest of the team arent expecting them.. perhaps we dont have the fitness and speed in our support players to make offloading commonplace.. that said there is an element of risk ofcourse, a bad one can turn a match the same way a good one can.

Its actually why I think having Cook+Liddle fresh could be rly important.. they will always be trailing.
 

Mojo

Bench
Messages
3,837
Some interesting statistics and insights in this article. Worth a click:

Thanks. They are some really interesting stats. My take aways are: 1. our defence is the key variable to whether we win or lose. We have to grind out our wins - because we don't have the strike weapons in attack; 2. we don't manage field position well - because our kick and kick-chase is lacking; 3. it's obvious that our defence structures have changed; we were entirely up and in over the past few years, with zero cover defence, so our opponents constantly just got outside us and scored, with back line movements that started from a long way out from our line (I felt sorry for Feagai and Rav being constantly held solely responsible for this shite) 4. Our forwards struggle to bend the line with the result that the attacking weapons that we do have (ie; basically only Sloan) isn't presented with many real opportunities. Occasionally we can go over the top thanks to Lomax's aerial skills.

These factors were highlighted in our win against the Storm. When our forwards play with real energy and our middle defence is solid we can beat the best in a hard, tight contest.

PS: it's a team sport. Flanno's getting this team to believe in itself. Star players are great to have, but they're even better as part of a great team. We're building. Personally, I'm so appreciative of what he's achieved to-date.
 

TheRev

Coach
Messages
10,844
nice seeing some positive press.. all it took was beating the ladder leaders @ home to break a 25yr hoodoo.

just rly hoping this good year will help him sell his vision and get a coupla bigger recruits to buy in.. have to admit I didnt know Holmes was from Townsville.. I thought he was a sharkies jr.. i.e. he would be mad keen to get back to the shire area with his family.. but it might be the opposite... but surely he must be pretty seriously entertaining it to have asked for a release and be in discussions...
 

Mojo

Bench
Messages
3,837
nice seeing some positive press.. all it took was beating the ladder leaders @ home to break a 25yr hoodoo.

just rly hoping this good year will help him sell his vision and get a coupla bigger recruits to buy in.. have to admit I didnt know Holmes was from Townsville.. I thought he was a sharkies jr.. i.e. he would be mad keen to get back to the shire area with his family.. but it might be the opposite... but surely he must be pretty seriously entertaining it to have asked for a release and be in discussions...
I think he's proving himself. Good on him! No doubt it's been as tough a challenge as anyone could have had. Whether anybody thinks he's good, bad or indifferent, any fair minded person will have to acknowledge his strength of character. I think this bodes well for the team and the club because I believe it's human nature for any organisation (such as footy team) to slowly but surely take on the personality of the person at the top.
 

hewi

Bench
Messages
4,128
I love this coach I think he bleeds red and white.


Hiding in the grandstand, PlayStations and those sprays: How Flanagan revived the Dragons​

By Adam Pengilly
AUGUST 9, 2024

Dragons coach Shane Flanagan.



It’s a tricky balance being an out-of-work rugby league coach. It’s not like you can log onto Seek and find a plethora of jobs right in your hitting zone.
When one of the 17 vacancies for an NRL head coach comes up, how do you approach it? Tell the board what you really think? Or tell them what you think they want to hear? Bust out the PowerPoint and reams of analytics to dazzle? Or just casually push your resume across the table?
It’s especially tricky when you haven’t landed one of those jobs for several years, and it’s getting close to a decade since you won an NRL premiership.



https://archive.md/64FvS/again?url=...gan-revived-the-dragons-20240808-p5k0px.html#





So, Shane Flanagan walked into the Wollongong home of Dragons chairman and powerful media executive Andrew Lancaster, someone he’d never met before, and maybe with his final shot to be an NRL head coach, hit him right between the eyes.
“A number of your players are unfit,” he said. “They need to be fitter, faster and stronger. That’s the first thing that needs to change.”
Lancaster sat and listened intently.

But the words really resonated with Dragons favourite son Ben Creagh, a club director who was the only other person at the meeting. Creagh would naturally feel a sense of conflict, his former premiership-winning teammates Ben Hornby and Dean Young had also auditioned for the job, which was Jason Ryles’ until the moment he had to put pen to paper. He left knowing Flanagan would be the man to take on one of the hardest jobs in rugby league: pleasing a suffocating fan base which demands success.
“[Those interviews] are always tricky ones, but I’m confident in my own ability,” Flanagan says. “I was more than content at Manly [as an assistant coach], I was happy there, but I wanted to be a head coach. If it came around, it came around. I wasn’t going to go, ‘shit, my time is over’.”
As Australia basks in the golden glow of a record Olympic Games haul, Flanagan’s fitter, faster, stronger blueprint seems apt.
Dragons coach Shane Flanagan (centre) with star players Ben Hunt and Zac Lomax.

Shunned as wooden spoon contenders before a ball was kicked this year, the Dragons play their biggest NRL match for years against another rejuvenated team, Cameron Ciraldo’s Bulldogs, at a sold-out Netstrata Jubilee Stadium on Saturday night.
It’s been six years since St George Illawarra played finals, eight for the Bulldogs. It’s an eternity for two of the NRL’s most passionate fan bases, in a competition where the pendulum is supposed to swing regularly thanks to the salary cap. There will be no more popular man at Kogarah than Flanagan, who led the Dragons’ arch rivals, the Sharks, to their maiden premiership. He’s given Dragons fans hope.
Having been cast into the shadows in his coaching career - Flanagan was indefinitely deregistered by the NRL in 2018 for breaching the terms of his ban during the supplements scandal by contacting Cronulla officials - his unofficial start at the Dragons began quietly in the darkness. In the final months of last season, he would sneak into WIN Stadium and sit at the top of the grandstand to watch training.

“While they didn’t know I was there, I was there,” Flanagan says. “I didn’t hide, but I would watch how they walked out on the field and trained and prepared. I was calling games for Fox too, so I watched them in warm-ups. I went to games just as a spectator. I was well prepared.”
What he wasn’t prepared for was how dire the Dragons’ training facilities were, largely based out of the ageing southern grandstand at WIN Stadium. When the Panthers, Broncos, Cowboys, Knights, Tigers or Sea Eagles want to sign a player, they take them on a tour of the best services a professional rugby league player can have. The Cowboys even have a sleeping room for players, replicating being at altitude. Dragons players would sit on a dressing room floor between sessions (the club had a DA approved this week for a new high performance centre at a University of Wollongong campus).
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It might not seem much, but Flanagan insisted on having a demountable room where the players could play pinball, cards, PlayStation … whatever as long as they could take their minds off things.
“The players had nowhere to go between training sessions, or if they were eating their lunch,” Flanagan says. “They were lying around in dressing rooms, which I thought was crazy. We extended the gym to make it much bigger. It wasn’t just a lick of paint.”
St George Illawarra Dragons coach Shane Flanagan at the Dragons Way function.

St George Illawarra Dragons coach Shane Flanagan at the Dragons Way function.
In one of his first official duties as new Dragons coach, Flanagan headed up an intimate and high-powered function for a number of corporate supporters and club legends. It was named the Dragons Way, borrowing an idea he’d picked up from a study trip to AFL heavyweights Carlton. On the day, Lancaster wanted the club to ban any future reference to joint venture, given St George Illawarra was on the cusp of 25 years as a single entity.

But Flanagan had the most telling admission: he expected the team to be playing finals in his first year. Even though almost every person in the room had one red and one white eye, including former Test cricket captain Mark Taylor, how many do you think truly believed him?
“Did I expect to be where we are? Yes,” Flanagan shrugs. “I knew the squad was better than a lot of people have been talking about.”
Maybe he was right.
Tyrell Sloan, Ben Hunt and Kyle Flanagan celebrate a Dragons try.


He’s talked his captain and halfback Ben Hunt off the ledge after repeated release requests last year and watched him celebrate their stirring win over Melbourne last week more than any other. He got so sick of Zac Lomax’s agitation for a new club, he simultaneously let him go from the rest of his deal and helped him reach the heights as arguably the game’s best winger this year.
Jaydn Su’A is skittling defenders like ten pins. A leaner Moses Suli has been awoken, the destructive centre everyone thought he could be. Flanagan sprayed Francis Molo in pre-season and told him he was free to leave, only for him to play his best football in years.
But perhaps his best, and trickiest, assignment has been with son Kyle, whose NRL career was at the crossroads last year after being cut by the Bulldogs, but has revived his career under his father.

It was always going to be a delicate act for father and son. But Flanagan junior has been a steadying presence in the halves alongside Hunt, and with the Dragons’ hanging on for their most stirring win in years last week, it was lost on few Kyle forced a last-gasp error from Harry Grant as the Storm surged at the St George Illawarra line.
Flanagan leapt out of his chair and hugged his assistants Dean Young and Ryan Carr.
“He’s direct, and he knows how to get a team up for a game,” Dragons forward Ryan Couchman says. “A lot of people had us to run last this year, but it was all rubbish … for us internally. We always believed we could do something this year.”
c1e951a435d1ce2c4fa135c1950cf78b7631f80b.jpg

Shane Flanagan has led the St George Illawarra Dragons to the brink of the finals in his first year in charge as head coach. He took over the Sharks in 2010 and led Cronulla to their first premiership in 2016. He's the fourth permanent head coach at the Dragons since Wayne Bennett led the club to its drought-breaking premiership in 2010.
Team:St George Illawarra DragonsAge:58Coaching games:204
Winning percentage:54.63Premiership:2016 (Sharks)Playing career:St George, Western Suburbs, Parramatta
Says Luciano Leilua: “He’s actually cool. So cool. He’s the man. He tells you how it is, and he knows how to work with you individually.”
What about his infamous sprays?
“Up there,” Leilua laughs.
 

hewi

Bench
Messages
4,128
Rest of it


Says Flanagan: “Compared to when I was younger, I haven’t even gone close.”
The problem for the Dragons is while this has been their best season in years, they’re only just inside the top eight and know they haven’t achieved anything yet. They’ve copped some horrific losses this year, including one against the Bulldogs when they led at half-time, by margins which read like a good set of lotto numbers: 38, 22, 20, 42, 32, 30, 36. It hardly screams like a finals team. But every time they cop a heavy defeat, Flanagan has dusted them off, and they’ve turned it around.
“The impact Shane is having on the field for us is replicated in his impact off the field as well in the club culture and connection,” chief executive Ryan Webb says. “It’s good to see how people are excited about where we’re going and where we’re heading. I hope they understand there’s still a long way to go.”
There is, and no one knows that more than Flanagan, who instead of watching solo from an empty grandstand, will have almost 20,000 people crammed into Kogarah on Saturday night watching his new team.
Fitter, faster, stronger.
 

Chook99

Juniors
Messages
33

NRL 2024: How Kyle and Shane Flanagan’s father-son combination has inspired Dragons resurgence​

Not many believed the Dragons could make the finals in 2024, and even fewer would have believed Kyle Flanagan would be vital to their finals run. But not coach and dad Shane.
Tyson Jackson Tyson Jackson

@Tyson_Jackson15


3 min read
August 10, 2024 - 6:00AM
News Sport Network
https://archive.md/YfwSC#share-tools
91707f2eadc0da8b2d8e59e6801c81d840669924.webp


Dragons coach Shane Flanagan makes a surprise appearance ahead of their suburban blockbuster against the Bulldogs. Buzz, Mick and Mobbsy talk about the Shark alarm sounding ahead of the finals, the Eels-Panthers clash, where Penrith sit among the all-time great teams and the top-eight squeeze. As always, they answer your questions.
Few had believed that St George Illawarra could make the finals this year, and fewer might have believed Kyle Flanagan would be key to them doing it.
But not coach Shane Flanagan.
Two of the competition’s reborn clubs will go head-to-head on Saturday night when the Dragons host Canterbury in a high-stakes encounter at a sold-out Netstrata Jubilee Oval.
And at the heart of St George Illawarra’s resurgence is a father-son duo that only the most diehard Dragons supporters would’ve predicted would lead them back into finals contention.
“I thought at the start of the year that we could play semi-finals, and everyone thought I had lost my marbles,” Shane said on Friday.
“We were tipped to come at the bottom of the table, so I suppose we have overachieved.”
Kyle Flanagan has been key to the Dragons improved form in 2024. Picture: Getty Images

Kyle Flanagan has been key to the Dragons improved form in 2024. Picture: Getty Images
After a turbulent stint at Canterbury, Kyle has enjoyed arguably career-best form under his father and his new club. At least by his numbers this year.
He is averaging more runs (four) and has achieved career bests in line breaks (six), tackle busts (19), and, with five games left, is at an equal high of seven offloads.
While the statistics remain modest in comparison to other playmakers in the competition, Kyle’s relative improvement has mirrored that of the team.
He has also made the subtle adjustment from halfback, where he has played most of his career, to playing second fiddle next to representative star and captain Ben Hunt.
At 25 years of age, Kyle may just be starting to enter his prime years.
“I have always been a believer that seven and six, just throw them a jersey and whatever one they pick up, they can wear because it doesn’t change the way we play,” Shane said.
Art by Boo Bailey

Art by Boo Bailey
“I knew he would have a good combination with Ben.
“Two different types of players – Ben’s a runner, and Kyle is a bit more of an organiser. So he is fitting into the system and structure well, and he is having a good season.”
While Kyle’s time with the Bulldogs did not go as planned, his father insists there is no bad blood between him and his former team.
Shane also dismissed any talk of him trying to secure the head coach role at his son’s former team as an “absolute load of rubbish”.
“Players move on. Kyle enjoyed his time at the Bulldogs, Kyle enjoyed his time at the Roosters, so he’s just moved on. He’s a Dragon now, and he has a job to do,” Shane said.
“It’s a tough job being a halfback at a club where, as we all know, the Bulldogs weren’t going that well last year, and Kyle’s the halfback, so he copped the criticism.
“We all know that, and Kyle knows that.”
Flanagan’s time at the Bulldogs did not go as planned. Picture: Getty Images

Flanagan’s time at the Bulldogs did not go as planned. Picture: Getty Images
The Dragons take on a Bulldogs side riding a wave of momentum heading as they endeavour to shatter their own finals drought.
Their September absence has been longer than their rivals this week – not since they were bundled out by Penrith in 2016 have Canterbury featured in the big games.
Both teams enter the clash brimming with confidence. The Bulldogs have reeled off four wins in their past five, while the hosts last week snapped a 25-year hoodoo in Melbourne.
“To be honest, I haven’t thought about their stats or records or anything like that,” Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo said.
“We’re preparing for their best game. They’ve got a lot of quality players and a big forward pack, so we’ve got our plans around that.
“Again, we are focused on what we can do, not what other people can do.”
The game marks the 150th for second-rower Viliame Kikau, who is in his second season with the club after following Ciraldo from Penrith to the Belmore.
“He’s one of our leaders. He’s just grown so much as a person over that 150 games. I hope we can rip in and give him something memorable,” Ciraldo said.
Canterbury front-rower Josh Curran is a certain starter despite battling a shoulder issue.
 
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