St. George brought their choking mentality to the new entity.
Illawarra brought juniors.
Steelers fans have been ripped off.
Are you serious????
St George won 15 premierships prior to the merge. Considering they were only in the comp from 1921 and the merger began in 1998 (a total of 77 years), they won a Grand Final every 5.1 years. No Club (except for the Broncos) has such a good strike rate. Even the 3 Grand Finbals we lost in the 90's were not chokes. In 1992 and 1993 we lost to raging hot favourites Brisbane. In 1996 we lost to unbackable favourites Manly with a team that had to be rebuilt after Super League decimated it. Even the coach left (Rod Reddy) and was replaced by David Waite who did the impossible and got us to within a mickey hair of a premiership.
There have only been two real chokes by the Dragons........1999 Grand Final (where a lot of decisions went against us in the second half) and the 2005 prelim final. In all other games we bowed out to better teams...
2008 - Manly, eventual premiers
2007 - Didn't make the semis
2006 - Lost to raging hot favourites, Melbourne.
2005 - choked against the Tigers
2004 - lost by a point to Penrith. We had a horrendous injury toll and half the team only just returned from injury in that game. The returning players included Barrett, Ryles, Bailey, Gasnier, thompson and Timmins. we lost Cooper for the game and Kite was moved to the centres. The dogs lost to the Cowboys and we went out backwards - like Manly in 2009
2003 - Didn't make finals after losing all of the super 6 in the second half of the season.
2002 - Beaten by a strong Cronulla team at Toyota
2001 - Beaten by defending premiers Broncos.
2000 - Didn't make the semis after half our 1999 team retired - Coyne, McGregor, Wishart, Brad Mackay, Patten went to dogs, Fitzgibbon went to Roosters.
Tom Ace, stop talking out of your arse and do some research before shooting your mouth off. The steelers were broke and would about to close their doors.