Sack Flanno….

[DragonMike]

Now that its all said and done, imho is we wont see the bounce back that we usually get with clubs sacking their coach or should I say mutually released. I dont believe we have the players especially in the backline that can step it up, I'm still expecting a flogging on Anzac Day unfortunately.

You may be right and I can certainly see your reasoning, particularly with the new Interim Coach being part of the team that got us to where we are. That is going to be a real challenge for Dean Young.
I think Anzac Day will give us an insight into why the more recent performances have been so bad.
Many suspect Flanno had lost the dressing room. If this was the case there should be a significant change in attitude. So win or lose, I would hope for a big improvement in effort, focus and intensity. I'm also hoping for a big improvement from Val, particularly if he's allowed to play on the left. I suspect his attitude has been affected by his inability to adapt quickly to right side play - where every single thing he does is the complete reverse of what he's done his whole career. However if none of this happens and they continue to play like B-graders, it will be a very hard watch and we'll be back to square one again - with yet another period of rebuilding. Please .... no!

 

[TSP]

What is out of context? That is what he said.

Normally I feel sorry for sacked coaches. I did for McGregor. He did the best he could. Less so for Griffin because his infatuation with his Broncos premiership winning U21s side from 10 years earlier was so annoying.

As for Flanno, he had something similar to Griffin but with only one player. That annoyed me but just this season first he said:

• Dragons can't win the premiership this year.
  (I'd call that just being realistic but experts were stunned by the comment and if we are being realistic, it was the team he has assembled.)
  
  
• Don't have the cattle.
  (What? He is saying the players he recruited or extended aren't any good? Must have pissed the players off no end. It would me. Notice there are no "feel good" stories about this or that player calling Flanno and apologising and no players coming out and blaming the playing group.)
  
  
• There is no one better in NSW Cup.
  (Despite them being equal first on the competition table? Must have pissed them off greatly. Probably pissed Willie Talau off as well.)

As a result, I don't feel a bit sorry for him.

It’s a bit spooky that Deano is last coach standing in that 3 coaches set up.

I can still hear Mary expressing his anger at having coaching chaperones at that presser.

He had a good go Mary, I was relieved Webby tapped him on the shoulder in the car park.

He’s a good bloke, no doubt about that. Mary was a freak player too. Deano not so bad either. Strike forward. A rich man’s KPP.

 

[Frank Facer]

It's all the Board's fault. A pack of self serving non accountable people wasting our time following the Dragons. They cannot make decisions on the interim coach. What a joke.

You know what guys, whomever is finally appointed to be the Head Coach will end up not able to land a Head Coaching job in the NRL once he finishes up with us as the cycle allows it to. For instance Steve Price (only in ESL was he a head coach not the NRL), Paul McGregor, Anthony Griffin and now Shane Flanagan (cannot see him landing a head coaching job at any other NRL club). Who is in line or is head hunted for the job might have to consider whether or not coaching the Dragons spells the end of their coaching career if that coach is the next unlucky person to fail. The pressure will be on from Day 1. How many games will we give the new coach before he gets criticised and another Thread started to sack him?

You are echoing my thoughts, except for the "taboo" subject that I have mentioned many times on this forum.

 

[Frank Facer]

The thing is.. Hornby is only coming if hes the 2027 coach and the Dragons side want the same agreement for Young.. that he is the longterm coach.. so here we are in a real pickle.. or.. we pick a different interim and they can keep debating it in the background.. we do need 'a' call by tomorrow.

So we are back to Hornby or Young. The only 2 applicants from 2023 and the only 2 who were left if Flanno knocked us back in 2023. lol

 

[Frank Facer]

View attachment 1068

the dragons answer to cutting out nepotism is more nepotism

Deja vu

 

[Red T]

With 19 wins Flanno joins the Gang of Four Flops. He snookered himself with shamelessly promoting Kyle.

Bennett was a good coach who had the football side of things sorted. You could go into Anzac Day confident of a win. Before that I thought Brian Smith was a good coach, ironically replacing Albert who was sacked.

Let us hope that Dean has learnt from his poor showing as an interim coach after Mary was fired…

 

[Dragons Chris]

With 19 wins Flanno joins the Gang of Four Flops. He snookered himself with shamelessly promoting Kyle.

Bennett was a good coach who had the football side of things sorted. You could go into Anzac Day confident of a win. Before that I thought Brian Smith was a good coach, ironically replacing Albert who was sacked.

Let us hope that Dean has learnt from his poor showing as an interim coach after Mary was fired…

Deano doesn't have much to work with. At least in the backs.

 

[Zen]

An obituary, for people who aren't into the whole brevity thing...


RIP the Flanagan era. 2024-2026

It was Saturday 31st August 2024, that, for me, marked the beginning of the end of Shane Flanagan. It was a little less than 12 months after taking over a Dragons squad that finished second last in 2023, and Flanagan had apparently steered a slightly ponderous and unreliable ship toward a most unfamiliar harbour: the finals series. Despite being tipped as spoon contenders, and despite a release request by the newly-minted superstar Zac Lomax, St George Illawarra had notched up a tidy 11 wins, and probably just needed a win over the lowly Parramatta Eels in the penultimate round to snag a spot in the top 8.

2024 hadn’t been a banner year by any means – they were flogged twice by the Roosters including a 60 point humiliation on Anzac Day, suffered further heavy floggings at the hands of hated rivals Cronulla and Canterbury, and an embarrassing 38-0 shutout by the Dolphins. On the bright side though, there were a couple of stunning wins over both Penrith and Melbourne away from home, hitting 50 v Tigers at WIN, the stunning form revival of Zac Lomax and Jaydn Sua, and an all-round lift in the team’s overall performance compared to the grim despair of the Griffin era. As at round 26, the balance of the season seemed ready to tip over on the “good” side. To still be in contention for the finals in late August was a rare treat! Ah how I miss those golden days.

I must confess, I didn’t actually watch the game in question (and still haven’t). My son was participating in a school performance recital thing that would finish at about half time of the Saints-Parra match, so as a dedicated parent I made the correct choice to devote my time to him, and didn’t even check my phone. When we got in the car to go home I did immediately flick the radio on. I can still remember the booming voice of Andrew Moore from ABC Grandstand as he bellowed “WELL THIS IS EMBARRASSING. THESE PLAYERS SHOULD BE ASHAMED... [at this point I was Schrodinger’s fan – either my team was dead or alive]... TO WEAR THE RED V JUMPER” [dead, then]. I think the score was 30-6 or something, and although the Dragons put on a bunch of second half tries, the dream was gone. The game was lost. They followed it up with another feeble loss in the final round at home against Canberra, and a once-probable finals surge had collapsed into a meek 11th place finish.

In the post-season the losses continued: Ben Hunt sought and gained a release (some may argue this wasn’t a loss at all, and I do still hate looking at his smug sooky face, but he was a pretty good player) and then Francis Molo followed suit. A slew of new recruits (almost all of them at the back ends of their careers) joined the club amidst considerable hype, with a bunch of highly-rated junior rookies joining the top squad poised to make their top grade debuts, and 2025 started with no small amount of pre-season promise, including a dazzling Charity Shield win in the Mudgee sunshine… but when the season proper kicked off some dark clouds approached. They lost 3 of the opening 4 games (including 2 in golden point), and after yet another Anzac Day demolition the steep slide down into mediocrity set in. Some shining lights (NRL debuts for a bunch of young guns, wins over 3 of the top 4 sides including the Cronulla Scum) were overshadowed by the spectre of nepotism, the early release of another player (Finau Latu), and another pathetic, limp end to a season: 4 consecutive losses – 3 of them with 40 points conceded. A 15th place finish. Not great.

Signing Keaon Koloamatangi in December 25 was a rare and celebrated off-season victory, but when reality bites it bites hard and it bites on the soft tissue of your arse: we felt those teeth sink in when "our" Keaon’s Rabbitohs fielded a NSW Cup side in the 2026 Charity Shield and romped comfortably to victory against a full-strength and utterly insipid Dragons team. It was this dreary performance that significantly cooled the modest hopes of yours truly regarding the 2026 NRL season. The arrival of Dan Atkinson and the crop of promising rookies notwithstanding, based on the Charity Shield alone I would have been shocked if the Dragons turned out to be a good side. Spoiler alert: I was not shocked. They added 7 losses to the 4 game losing streak, a very public release request from yet another player (with at least 3 others also rumoured to be keen to leave) and on April 20, Flanno was gone. The week of the Anzac match, our biggest regular season game of the year, and 3 days shy of St George’s Day. A consequential day in the history of this club: St George played its first ever game on St George’s Day 1921, and here we are 105 years later still tormented by the undulating fortunes of the team in red and white. Some times you win 11 comps in a row, some times you lose 11 games in a row. This is exactly what the Buddha was talking about when he described samsara, the cycle of endless suffering.

Anyway, the 2026 team was Shane Flanagan’s team. He’d either recruited or extended every single player in the NRL squad, except for one bloke that Ben Haran extended on a lucrative long-term deal: Blake Lawrie (who Flanno still put in the starting team 3 times). It was the squad he built. But they kept losing.

The nepotism claims are an easy mark, and sometimes may be unreasonable. Kyle Flanagan is certainly a solid effort player, whose value is often overlooked. However he is by no means essential and his apparently guaranteed starting spot will inevitably be scrutinised if they are losing games. And, they kept losing.

There were some bizarre, head-scratching team selections – not just in 2026 but in the preceding 12 months – culminating in the public release request of Loko Pasifika Tonga who had put up impressive numbers in the dominant NSW Cup team. Now, of course the head coach can and should be granted significant creative freedom with selecting a team, especially when they’re winning or at least performing strongly. But they kept losing.

The team played a rather dour, grinding, and dare I say, boring, style of football. This is not necessarily a bad thing when done successfully, and coach Flanagan does boast “winning a premiership” in his resume so perhaps he earnt some leeway in the early years. But, they kept losing.


A tenure that began with so much promise and clear improvement, has led to a severe year-on-year regression, and we now face a harrowing battle to avoid an historic wooden spoon. Based on the stark downward trend of the last 2 and a bit years, there was clearly precious little chance of Flanagan winning that battle. The club have made the correct, logical decision in cutting him loose, and even if we still ultimately fail to avoid the spoon this year, at least we retain some small chance of keeping and nurturing those few green shoots that undoubtedly exist within the squad, with a hope of converting them into a quality football team in the future. And to jettison Ben Haran at the same time? The dead weight that has seemingly been untouchable for well over a decade now and who earnt promotion after every end of season review? Well, that’s the best two-for-one deal I’ve seen since the Couchman twins.

Happy St George’s Day everyone, and as the Lord Buddha said: “Long is the road for the weary, and up the f**kin Dragons.”

 

[Dragon David]

An obituary, for people who aren't into the whole brevity thing...


RIP the Flanagan era. 2024-2026

It was Saturday 31st August 2024, that, for me, marked the beginning of the end of Shane Flanagan. It was a little less than 12 months after taking over a Dragons squad that finished second last in 2023, and Flanagan had apparently steered a slightly ponderous and unreliable ship toward a most unfamiliar harbour: the finals series. Despite being tipped as spoon contenders, and despite a release request by the newly-minted superstar Zac Lomax, St George Illawarra had notched up a tidy 11 wins, and probably just needed a win over the lowly Parramatta Eels in the penultimate round to snag a spot in the top 8.

2024 hadn’t been a banner year by any means – they were flogged twice by the Roosters including a 60 point humiliation on Anzac Day, suffered further heavy floggings at the hands of hated rivals Cronulla and Canterbury, and an embarrassing 38-0 shutout by the Dolphins. On the bright side though, there were a couple of stunning wins over both Penrith and Melbourne away from home, hitting 50 v Tigers at WIN, the stunning form revival of Zac Lomax and Jaydn Sua, and an all-round lift in the team’s overall performance compared to the grim despair of the Griffin era. As at round 26, the balance of the season seemed ready to tip over on the “good” side. To still be in contention for the finals in late August was a rare treat! Ah how I miss those golden days.

I must confess, I didn’t actually watch the game in question (and still haven’t). My son was participating in a school performance recital thing that would finish at about half time of the Saints-Parra match, so as a dedicated parent I made the correct choice to devote my time to him, and didn’t even check my phone. When we got in the car to go home I did immediately flick the radio on. I can still remember the booming voice of Andrew Moore from ABC Grandstand as he bellowed “WELL THIS IS EMBARRASSING. THESE PLAYERS SHOULD BE ASHAMED... [at this point I was Schrodinger’s fan – either my team was dead or alive]... TO WEAR THE RED V JUMPER” [dead, then]. I think the score was 30-6 or something, and although the Dragons put on a bunch of second half tries, the dream was gone. The game was lost. They followed it up with another feeble loss in the final round at home against Canberra, and a once-probable finals surge had collapsed into a meek 11th place finish.

In the post-season the losses continued: Ben Hunt sought and gained a release (some may argue this wasn’t a loss at all, and I do still hate looking at his smug sooky face, but he was a pretty good player) and then Francis Molo followed suit. A slew of new recruits (almost all of them at the back ends of their careers) joined the club amidst considerable hype, with a bunch of highly-rated junior rookies joining the top squad poised to make their top grade debuts, and 2025 started with no small amount of pre-season promise, including a dazzling Charity Shield win in the Mudgee sunshine… but when the season proper kicked off some dark clouds approached. They lost 3 of the opening 4 games (including 2 in golden point), and after yet another Anzac Day demolition the steep slide down into mediocrity set in. Some shining lights (NRL debuts for a bunch of young guns, wins over 3 of the top 4 sides including the Cronulla Scum) were overshadowed by the spectre of nepotism, the early release of another player (Finau Latu), and another pathetic, limp end to a season: 4 consecutive losses – 3 of them with 40 points conceded. A 15th place finish. Not great.

Signing Keaon Koloamatangi in December 25 was a rare and celebrated off-season victory, but when reality bites it bites hard and it bites on the soft tissue of your arse: we felt those teeth sink in when "our" Keaon’s Rabbitohs fielded a NSW Cup side in the 2026 Charity Shield and romped comfortably to victory against a full-strength and utterly insipid Dragons team. It was this dreary performance that significantly cooled the modest hopes of yours truly regarding the 2026 NRL season. The arrival of Dan Atkinson and the crop of promising rookies notwithstanding, based on the Charity Shield alone I would have been shocked if the Dragons turned out to be a good side. Spoiler alert: I was not shocked. They added 7 losses to the 4 game losing streak, a very public release request from yet another player (with at least 3 others also rumoured to be keen to leave) and on April 20, Flanno was gone. The week of the Anzac match, our biggest regular season game of the year, and 3 days shy of St George’s Day. A consequential day in the history of this club: St George played its first ever game on St George’s Day 1921, and here we are 105 years later still tormented by the undulating fortunes of the team in red and white. Some times you win 11 comps in a row, some times you lose 11 games in a row. This is exactly what the Buddha was talking about when he described samsara, the cycle of endless suffering.

Anyway, the 2026 team was Shane Flanagan’s team. He’d either recruited or extended every single player in the NRL squad, except for one bloke that Ben Haran extended on a lucrative long-term deal: Blake Lawrie (who Flanno still put in the starting team 3 times). It was the squad he built. But they kept losing.

The nepotism claims are an easy mark, and sometimes may be unreasonable. Kyle Flanagan is certainly a solid effort player, whose value is often overlooked. However he is by no means essential and his apparently guaranteed starting spot will inevitably be scrutinised if they are losing games. And, they kept losing.

There were some bizarre, head-scratching team selections – not just in 2026 but in the preceding 12 months – culminating in the public release request of Loko Pasifika Tonga who had put up impressive numbers in the dominant NSW Cup team. Now, of course the head coach can and should be granted significant creative freedom with selecting a team, especially when they’re winning or at least performing strongly. But they kept losing.

The team played a rather dour, grinding, and dare I say, boring, style of football. This is not necessarily a bad thing when done successfully, and coach Flanagan does boast “winning a premiership” in his resume so perhaps he earnt some leeway in the early years. But, they kept losing.


A tenure that began with so much promise and clear improvement, has led to a severe year-on-year regression, and we now face a harrowing battle to avoid an historic wooden spoon. Based on the stark downward trend of the last 2 and a bit years, there was clearly precious little chance of Flanagan winning that battle. The club have made the correct, logical decision in cutting him loose, and even if we still ultimately fail to avoid the spoon this year, at least we retain some small chance of keeping and nurturing those few green shoots that undoubtedly exist within the squad, with a hope of converting them into a quality football team in the future. And to jettison Ben Haran at the same time? The dead weight that has seemingly been untouchable for well over a decade now and who earnt promotion after every end of season review? Well, that’s the best two-for-one deal I’ve seen since the Couchman twins.

Happy St George’s Day everyone, and as the Lord Buddha said: “Long is the road for the weary, and up the f**kin Dragons.”

Very well put Zen, thanks for your your time to write this up. It encapsulates much of the small history that Shane Flanagan played in our many attempts to become a successful club that we fans have been patiently waiting to see. May the Flanagan era R.I.P. and with that our destiny of good fortune will be bestowed upon us.