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“Don’t worry about Shane Flanagan, he’ll get through it.”
Even if he’s talking in third person. As the latest NRL coach in the gun, and the latest to try and lift the Dragons out of a mire that stretches back to the Wayne Bennett days, Flanagan dug in once more on Thursday morning in Wollongong.
“There’s blood in the water,” he quipped before an 11-minute press conference, noting the influx of Sydney media who typically don’t make the trip south for the coach’s media commitments.
In a world of stretched newsrooms and dwindling resources, coupled with the Dragons’ decade-long decline, typically, the trip is rarely worth the squeeze for rugby league journos.
With nine straight losses, a must-win clash against Manly on Friday and publicly at least, radio silence from St George Illawarra powerbrokers on their coach’s future, Flanagan was resolute as usual.
And in far better shape than the shattered man who fronted the cameras and recorders after Dragons faithful booed last Saturday’s 32-0 loss to the Cowboys.
Feeling the heat: Dragons coach Shane Flanagan.NRL Imagery
But an air of inevitability hangs. And not just around Flanagan’s future, despite a two-year extension signed off by the club last August.
“It’s the NRL. If you don’t win [scrutiny] is going to come,” Flanagan said. Anthony Seibold (who Flanagan was assistant to before taking the Dragons job) was speared by Manly all of 14 days ago. Until three subsequent wins, North Queensland’s Todd Payten had been most likely to fall first in 2026.
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“I can’t believe, to be honest, the way we attack each other in this great game of ours,” Flanagan said.
“I love the game. I love the people that I’ve met through it. I love the players that I’ve coached. I understand it, but I don’t enjoy it and I don’t encourage what’s going on.
“I wouldn’t wish what’s going on with me in the last couple of weeks to anyone. That’s the way it is. I can’t change that.”
Flanagan is, of course, paid handsomely to wear the scrutiny, as are most of his underperforming players.
He still has a contract and despite understandably not having the answers immediately after last Saturday’s insipid performance, he still believes. So he will keep punching against the tide.
“I’m not worried about my future,” he said.
Though “you can imagine what the feedback’s been” in conversations with chairman Andrew Lancaster and CEO Tim Watsford.
“I’ve got more important things to worry about. At this stage of my career, I’ve got to worry about the club. I’m not worried about me. And if I do that, if I do the job and we get through it, that’s great. And if we don’t, we’ll walk away and just say that I tried my best.”
Would you walk away?
“No, I’m here to do a job and I still feel I’m the best person for it. So I’ll just keep battling on. I’ve [coached rugby league] for 20 years, so I think I can do it.”
As the questions kept coming, old ground, inevitably, was covered once more.
Shane and Kyle Flanagan.NRL Photos
Kyle Flanagan isn’t returning from a heavy concussion at halfback “just because of his surname”.
“He’s in our top three or four players competitive wise, week in, week out. So he’s our best halfback in the club at the moment. So we pick him.”
Flanagan would have to answer to wife Cathie if Kyle wasn’t completely fit to play by the way.
The state of the Dragons roster – “have you got it wrong?” – was answered with a sidestep that said plenty, and pointed, as Flanagan has more than once, to the long-term impacts of Ben Hunt, Zac Lomax and Francis Molo falling out and leaving the club.
The Dragons have paused all extension talks given the coaching uncertainty.
“And if I’m a player, it’s probably not a good time to be coming and asking for anything as well,” Flanagan noted. “It’s not, ‘We don’t want the players’ or we’re moving on from those players. It’s just, ‘Let’s just concentrate on football’, because we need to.”
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Tyrell Sloan gets a start at fullback due to Clint Gutherson’s hamstring injury, winger Setu Tu replaces the suspended David Fale and Daniel Atkinson shifts to five-eighth on Friday night.
Mostly forced rather than wholesale changes to a team that has forgotten how to win.
“There was one or two [more selection calls] I was considering, but I put a lot of faith in some of those boys that have played the last couple of weeks,” Flanagan said. “I’m not saying this is their last opportunity, but they’ve been given an opportunity to turn it around and hopefully that happens.”
As for how many more Flanagan gets, with all that “blood in the water”? Unfortunately, it all feels a bit inevitable.
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Dan Walsh is a sports reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.From our partners