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Manu said if it's NRL it's the Roosters. No chance.
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Manu said if it's NRL it's the Roosters. No chance.
OPINION
Shane Flanagan has written off 2024 for the Dragons already. This is a good thing
Andrew Webster
Chief Sports Writer
February 6, 2024 — 5.44am
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When St George Illawarra were getting serious last year about signing Shane Flanagan as coach, there was determined pushback from the St George side of the joint-venture.
It had less to do with Flanagan’s past at arch rivals Cronulla, including the 2011 supplements scandal, and more to do with his son, Kyle.
Play Video
https://archive.md/JiJhE#
Play video
1:27
Sea Eagles impress in scrimmage with Dragons
The Sea Eagles took on the Dragons in an opposed training session that came as a warning to Saints supporters.
Some directors feared that if they signed the father then the son would soon follow.
When Shane signed with the Dragons in June for three years, it evidently didn’t come with a “No Kyle” clause because, by September, his son had also been signed for two.
In that moment, it was clear the Dragons board and management had handed the keys to the head coach to do whatever he felt necessary to flick the switch on this most frustrating of football teams.
That’s why it was reassuring to hear what Flanagan had to say following an opposed session against Manly last week about his ambitions for the 2024 season.
Kyle and Shane Flanagan.CREDIT: GETTY
“Our focus is 2025,” he said. “We’ve made some changes in 2024 and we’re still looking for some players, but our real focus will be for 2025 and 2026. The goal is to compete right to the end and be in the semi-final race right to the end. We’re going to be a side that’s hard to beat and we’re going to try not to beat ourselves.”
Now that’s different: a coach admitting before the season starts not to expect too much. May as well book that trip to the Maldives in September, Dragons fans. Not much doing at home.
Flanagan’s candour, though, is to be admired. This is the first year of the club’s most important rebuild. It doesn’t have too many left to get right before fans start walking away.
Dragons bosses held on too long with Paul McGregor, missed the ball by a metre with their Anthony Griffin air-swing, and are now relying on Flanagan to save their football side.
People judge teams too soon on two elements: their ladder position and the quality of the player they can sign.
Flanagan was criticised during the off-season for failing to pluck a sizeable name from the player market. He missed out on Cowboys half Tom Dearden and Warriors prop Addin Fonua-Blake in the space of a day back in December.
He couldn’t entice St Helens star Jack Welsby out of the UK, and not even $1.2 million a season could get Roosters centre Joseph Manu even remotely interested.
The Dragons signed Warriors playmaker Ronald Volkman but club medicos didn’t check under the bonnet before agreeing to terms and he’s been cut loose because of an existing shoulder injury.
So the 2024 gains column looks like this: Hame Sele (Rabbitohs), Kyle Flanagan (Bulldogs), Tom Eisenhuth (Storm), Corey Allan (Roosters), Jesse Marschke (Bears NSW Cup) and Raymond Faitala-Mariner (Bulldogs). Allan suffered a torn ACL at pre-season training and will miss the season.
The Dragons have recruited Raymond Faitala-Mariner from Canterbury.CREDIT: DRAGONS MEDIA
The inability to sign any marquee players isn’t a reflection on Flanagan but the club and how far it’s fallen after years of dysfunction.
This is the problem with mediocrity: soon enough you’ll give off the same stench as the Tigers.
Superstars aren’t always the answer. Paying well over market value for a marquee player or two might generate favourable publicity in the pre-season, but it comes back to bite you when you’re in the grind of winter.
Remember how we were all talking about a Tigers’ finals appearance a year ago because they had signed hooker Api Koroisau and back-rower Isaiah Papali’i?
The last thing the Dragons need is a sugar hit. They need a slow, methodical rebuild, starting with a team that might not make the eight but will always compete, as Flanagan indicated.
So ladder position shouldn’t mean much this year, although I’ve got no doubt that Flanagan was lowering expectations around himself when he asked fans not judge his side on what happens in 2024.
He keeps saying all the right things publicly about Ben Hunt, but that doesn’t mean the captain and halfback still doesn’t want out of the final two years of his contract after requesting a release last year.
He also argues Hunt’s running game will complement Kyle Flanagan’s so-called game management.
Fathers coaching their sons is happening more and more in the NRL for some reason. However, it’s tricky when the player isn’t Nathan Cleary, but a fringe first-grader plagued by doubt.
Flanagan wants the best for his son, who debuted under him in 2018 when he was coaching the Sharks before rocky stints at the Roosters and, more recently, the Bulldogs.
But each time Flanagan made suggestions to the Roosters and Bulldogs about how they should play his son, it did more harm than good and the pressure on Kyle became unfair. Nobody wants to see a young player break down with emotion like he did during a media conference May 2021 when the Bulldogs dropped him.
According to Shane Flanagan, the long-term strategy with Kyle was to turn him into a hooker – but you could see a path opening up to the No.6 jumper as soon he signed.
The Dragons, for some reason, had released Jayden Sullivan from the final two years of his contract to allow him to sign with the Tigers. Another local junior cut adrift.
The club did so knowing five-eighth Talatau Amone was still facing serious assault, stalking and intimidation charges following a rooftop hammer attack on a tradie in October 2022.
If Amone was found guilty, he was looking at either jail time or, at the very least, an NRL deregistration. He dodged jail but a two-year corrections order served to him in December was enough for the NRL to tear up his contract.
Amone has appealed his conviction and wants to come back to prove his “haters” wrong, but the Flanagans have just as much to prove.
This is the father’s chance to turn his son into the player he thinks he can be. It’s also the father’s chance, in his first head coaching job since 2018, to show that rugby league hasn’t passed him by.
Every Dragons coach since Wayne Bennett has been coaching for his life, chopping and changing teams and the way they play.
Flanagan wants sustained success and, in doing so, every St George Illawarra stakeholder — owners, directors, management, and especially weary fans — needs to give him time.
Which, by the way, starts now
I love the confidence and I hope for the same.. but its all realtive, and I can't remember a time when the rest of the NRL clubs were this competitive.. even the worst sides in a Tigers, Raiders, Dogs, Knights, Titans, Cowboys.. I mean these clubs rosters are banging in comparison.. this is a really bad time to be attempting a club rebuild..
As I said in another thread, theres a good feeling vibe with our juniors that have started the season, I'm holding out for our Flegg and KOE sides to do well. Eventually those results will filter to NRL, one thing we must absolutely not do is neglect our lower grades, that is where our marquee players are.
It's a good farm. Bit of a renaissance in the junior ranks talent wise.
That squad made the 8.
wwos.nine.com.au
If you're keen to see a bit more of the Manly scrimmage.. watch this from about the 7.37 mark. It's Manly-focused, but their media department is the one putting out this content so we can't complain. We have to settle for the occasional lame instagram post I guessOPINION
Shane Flanagan has written off 2024 for the Dragons already. This is a good thing
Andrew Webster
Chief Sports Writer
February 6, 2024 — 5.44am
Save
Share
Normal text sizeALarger text sizeAVery large text sizeA
When St George Illawarra were getting serious last year about signing Shane Flanagan as coach, there was determined pushback from the St George side of the joint-venture.
It had less to do with Flanagan’s past at arch rivals Cronulla, including the 2011 supplements scandal, and more to do with his son, Kyle.
Play Video
https://archive.md/JiJhE#
Play video
1:27
Sea Eagles impress in scrimmage with Dragons
The Sea Eagles took on the Dragons in an opposed training session that came as a warning to Saints supporters.
Some directors feared that if they signed the father then the son would soon follow.
When Shane signed with the Dragons in June for three years, it evidently didn’t come with a “No Kyle” clause because, by September, his son had also been signed for two.
In that moment, it was clear the Dragons board and management had handed the keys to the head coach to do whatever he felt necessary to flick the switch on this most frustrating of football teams.
That’s why it was reassuring to hear what Flanagan had to say following an opposed session against Manly last week about his ambitions for the 2024 season.
Kyle and Shane Flanagan.CREDIT: GETTY
“Our focus is 2025,” he said. “We’ve made some changes in 2024 and we’re still looking for some players, but our real focus will be for 2025 and 2026. The goal is to compete right to the end and be in the semi-final race right to the end. We’re going to be a side that’s hard to beat and we’re going to try not to beat ourselves.”
Now that’s different: a coach admitting before the season starts not to expect too much. May as well book that trip to the Maldives in September, Dragons fans. Not much doing at home.
Flanagan’s candour, though, is to be admired. This is the first year of the club’s most important rebuild. It doesn’t have too many left to get right before fans start walking away.
Dragons bosses held on too long with Paul McGregor, missed the ball by a metre with their Anthony Griffin air-swing, and are now relying on Flanagan to save their football side.
People judge teams too soon on two elements: their ladder position and the quality of the player they can sign.
Flanagan was criticised during the off-season for failing to pluck a sizeable name from the player market. He missed out on Cowboys half Tom Dearden and Warriors prop Addin Fonua-Blake in the space of a day back in December.
He couldn’t entice St Helens star Jack Welsby out of the UK, and not even $1.2 million a season could get Roosters centre Joseph Manu even remotely interested.
The Dragons signed Warriors playmaker Ronald Volkman but club medicos didn’t check under the bonnet before agreeing to terms and he’s been cut loose because of an existing shoulder injury.
So the 2024 gains column looks like this: Hame Sele (Rabbitohs), Kyle Flanagan (Bulldogs), Tom Eisenhuth (Storm), Corey Allan (Roosters), Jesse Marschke (Bears NSW Cup) and Raymond Faitala-Mariner (Bulldogs). Allan suffered a torn ACL at pre-season training and will miss the season.
The Dragons have recruited Raymond Faitala-Mariner from Canterbury.CREDIT: DRAGONS MEDIA
The inability to sign any marquee players isn’t a reflection on Flanagan but the club and how far it’s fallen after years of dysfunction.
This is the problem with mediocrity: soon enough you’ll give off the same stench as the Tigers.
Superstars aren’t always the answer. Paying well over market value for a marquee player or two might generate favourable publicity in the pre-season, but it comes back to bite you when you’re in the grind of winter.
Remember how we were all talking about a Tigers’ finals appearance a year ago because they had signed hooker Api Koroisau and back-rower Isaiah Papali’i?
The last thing the Dragons need is a sugar hit. They need a slow, methodical rebuild, starting with a team that might not make the eight but will always compete, as Flanagan indicated.
So ladder position shouldn’t mean much this year, although I’ve got no doubt that Flanagan was lowering expectations around himself when he asked fans not judge his side on what happens in 2024.
He keeps saying all the right things publicly about Ben Hunt, but that doesn’t mean the captain and halfback still doesn’t want out of the final two years of his contract after requesting a release last year.
He also argues Hunt’s running game will complement Kyle Flanagan’s so-called game management.
Fathers coaching their sons is happening more and more in the NRL for some reason. However, it’s tricky when the player isn’t Nathan Cleary, but a fringe first-grader plagued by doubt.
Flanagan wants the best for his son, who debuted under him in 2018 when he was coaching the Sharks before rocky stints at the Roosters and, more recently, the Bulldogs.
But each time Flanagan made suggestions to the Roosters and Bulldogs about how they should play his son, it did more harm than good and the pressure on Kyle became unfair. Nobody wants to see a young player break down with emotion like he did during a media conference May 2021 when the Bulldogs dropped him.
According to Shane Flanagan, the long-term strategy with Kyle was to turn him into a hooker – but you could see a path opening up to the No.6 jumper as soon he signed.
The Dragons, for some reason, had released Jayden Sullivan from the final two years of his contract to allow him to sign with the Tigers. Another local junior cut adrift.
The club did so knowing five-eighth Talatau Amone was still facing serious assault, stalking and intimidation charges following a rooftop hammer attack on a tradie in October 2022.
If Amone was found guilty, he was looking at either jail time or, at the very least, an NRL deregistration. He dodged jail but a two-year corrections order served to him in December was enough for the NRL to tear up his contract.
Amone has appealed his conviction and wants to come back to prove his “haters” wrong, but the Flanagans have just as much to prove.
This is the father’s chance to turn his son into the player he thinks he can be. It’s also the father’s chance, in his first head coaching job since 2018, to show that rugby league hasn’t passed him by.
Every Dragons coach since Wayne Bennett has been coaching for his life, chopping and changing teams and the way they play.
Flanagan wants sustained success and, in doing so, every St George Illawarra stakeholder — owners, directors, management, and especially weary fans — needs to give him time.
Which, by the way, starts now
www.theguardian.com
Thanks for sharing @Dragon DavidShane Flanagan vows to restore reputation and coach in NRL again
Former Cronulla mentor Shane Flanagan is resolved to returning to the NRL coaching ranks one day despite being blocked from holding a head coaching job for the next two years.
Note below what Todd Greenberg has said -
"I have spoken to Shane at length and he has expressed significant remorse and accepted responsibility for his past actions and the detrimental impact they have had on the game,” Greenberg said.
So he did express remorse and accepted responsibility going from this article.
You are welcome blacksafake.
Crickets
He did apologise and was remorseful, im not expecting him to apologise everytime in an interview and nor should he have to. He did the crime he did the time, lets move on and just get back to backing our coach and the team, im sure there will be heaps of things to talk about in the next few weeksShane Flanagan vows to restore reputation and coach in NRL again
Former Cronulla mentor Shane Flanagan is resolved to returning to the NRL coaching ranks one day despite being blocked from holding a head coaching job for the next two years.
Note below what Todd Greenberg has said -
"I have spoken to Shane at length and he has expressed significant remorse and accepted responsibility for his past actions and the detrimental impact they have had on the game,” Greenberg said.
So he did express remorse and accepted responsibility going from this article.
If you are talking about @Old Timer, he will never admit any fault in any way on any matter, he’ll double down.
Yeah I remember reading that story at the time. I'm a fan of Flanagan at our club. I think he's served his punishment. I remember thinking at the time that he should have taken more public accountability for his actions, he was in charge at the time it happened and it could have had detrimental health effects on his young players. He did his apologising internally, individually, ok. That statement didn't cut it for me. I still think he should've owned his errors in public at the time. But it's water under the bridge now, he got punished, served his time, and now he's going to win us a comp.
Old Timer is to be respected he says it like it is.
