Dean Young is getting his house in order.
The Dragons coach has assembled the backroom team he wants to lead the club out of the doldrums, recruitment is percolating, and the local pathways that once helped him into the NRL as a player are firing once again.
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But right now Young is actually cleaning house. It’s 6.30pm in the sheds at CommBank Stadium. St George Illawarra have just completed their fourth win of the season, and Young – chatty, steely and abundantly calm all at once – is cleaning up the remnants of the team’s celebration song, which happened moments earlier.
“He’s that sort of guy,” Dragons hooker Jacob Liddle says of Young rolling up his sleeves. “The big thing with Deano is that he cares.”
St George Illawarra players celebrate their win over the Wests Tigers. Source: NRL Dragons.Source: FOX SPORTS
Last-placed on the NRL ladder after a period of intense, unrelenting pressure, St George Illawarra have weathered some tough days this year, but there is a genuine sense of optimism about how this proud club has rebounded from its lowest ebb with Young at the helm.
In this foxsports.com.au feature, the 42-year-old gives an insight into how he handled the toughest moments since taking over from Shane Flanagan as Dragons coach in April, the men he has assembled to lead the club forward, and why he’s taking a personal approach to making the Dragons a better experience for players.
THE MINDSET BEHIND YOUNG’S COACHING STYLE
When the chips were down at the Dragons in April this year, seven games into a season with no wins, no coach and a freeze on recruitment, Dean Young employed a very simple ethos upon being thrusted into the temporary coaching role – and later as a permanent fixture in July.
There were no Churchillian speeches, no impromptu boot camps. Just a simple approach with authenticity at its heart.
“Be yourself. It’s as simple as that,” Young says.
“You’re not always going to be everyone’s cup of tea as a coach. Some people are really going to like your style of coaching, and there’s some that probably don’t.
“But players are smart: they see through people trying to be something you’re not. So just be yourself and see where it lands you.”
Young’s approach to the game makes sense when you consider, as a player, it helped reap a kid from the Dapto Canaries a premiership with the Dragons back in 2010, together with NSW and Kangaroos honours. On the field he was as tough as they come; in his final years he was consigned to field training only 20 minutes the day before a game – such was the extent of a chronic knee injury.
“Excuses aren’t a part of his genetic makeup. They just don’t exist in Dean’s life,” Wayne Bennett, who coached Young to that 2010 premiership, once said.
Dean Young (L) and captain Ben Hornby hoist the NRL Telstra Premiership Trophy as they leave the field after St George-Illawarra Dragons defeated the Sydney Roosters in 2010 NRL Grand Final at ANZ Stadium, Olympic Park, Homebush in Sydney.Source: News Limited
In a coaching apprenticeship which has encompassed assistant roles at St George Illawarra, North Queensland, Tonga and NSW, and more recently at the Dragons under predecessor Shane Flanagan, there have some key lessons for Young along the way. He has one key takeaway from this season.
“I don’t know if it’s a lesson, but when I took the job I knew it was going to be a really tough job. I was really conscious of staying calm through that period and I knew I hate losing, but me walking around angry and shitty after losses wasn’t going to help us in the situation we were in,” Young says.
“The players needed support and guidance. I just approached it that way – that they needed me to support them and that’s what I tried to do.
“If we didn’t show signs of improvement, I wouldn’t have got the opportunity to coach the team for the next two years. I’m forever grateful for the staff and the players to buy into the change; to show improvement. It has given me another opportunity to show what we can do, and it’s up to me now. Make it work.”
The improvements might not have been immediately obvious to the NRL world. But Young said he noticed incremental gains in just his second week at the helm.
“The way we trained and how we stripped everything back, we went back to fundamentals,” Young reflects.
“I kept on saying it in press conferences, and everybody looked at me like, ‘You’ve just been flogged again’. I kept saying, ‘I’m seeing it at training’ and no-one probably believed us. But I’ve been around footy for a long time and you can see when people are committing to things. We’ve slowly improved, we’re still not where we need to be: it’s been a disappointing year – we can’t hide away from that.”
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Another four weeks went past without a win. And then on May 31 this year, 295 days since their last victory, the Dragons upset the Broncos to finally break through. The win merely formalised the improvement Young and the playing group had already seen.
There have been slivers of hope since then, too. Having posted their second consecutive win last Sunday – the first time that has happened since August, 2025 – the Dragons dressing sheds are beginning to resemble the look of a side on the rise. Not overjoyed, but connected.
The players are buying in, and the Red V faithful are taking notice too.
“It’s not the season we’ve wanted. But the last couple of months we’ve showed a bit of consistency and progression,” says Liddle, who has been at the club since 2023. “The boys are doing well. They’re fighting hard, and all the young boys coming through are playing good footy.
“Dean’s style is simple. He has some good fundamentals that we’ve gone back to, that has got our game and the boys going forward. We’re playing a lot straighter.
“The big thing with Deano is that he cares. He shows that off the field, the boys have all bought into what he’s brought to this coaching role. He’ll take you aside for conversations that you need during the week. He’s doing well.”
THE MEN BEHIND THE SCENES
Dean Young wasted no time in appointing the people he wanted to help him lead the Dragons out of the doldrums.
Assistant Mick Ennis was sacked and replaced by Tom Eisenhuth, who retired from playing at the Dragons last year and was involved in the club’s academy system, while esteemed footy head John Davey was brought in as head of sports science, video analysis and conditioning.
When you consider there’s Young, Ben Creagh as the Dragons’ chief operating officer, and Tim Watsford as chief executive, it’s a relatively youthful team – so it stood to reason that the appointed head of football was experienced and knew the Dragons inside-out.
That man is Scott Stewart, a Gerringong local who has been in the Dragons system for more than 20 years and is the father of gun forward Hamish Stewart. Anyone who has spent time around the Dragons will recognise Stewart’s face: he is the heart and soul of the club.
According to Young, Stewart’s leadership through the tougher moments of the season has been invaluable.
“To the club’s credit when I was given the job as interim coach, they said, ‘What do you need?’ I said, ‘I don’t need anything, except to have Scotty with me’,” Young remembers.
“His role at the club was in welfare, but I said that I needed him with me. Scotty has been around footy for a long, long time.
“With the situation we were in, coming last and not winning a game, having Scotty there I knew was going to be good for the environment.”
The other piece of the puzzle has been former Warriors and Eels coach Daniel Anderson, who joined the Dragons midway through 2025 as head of recruitment and pathways. Anderson was instrumental in landing the Dragons’ first marquee signing for 2027, Souths gun Keaon Koloamatangi, back in January. Some big names have followed: Scott Drinkwater, Luke Metcalf, Phillip Sami, Connor Watson and Kodi Nikorima.
But what is equally comforting to Dragons fans is that the club is acutely focused on the retention of its juniors for the first time in a long time. They’ve re-signed Loko Jr Pasifiki Tonga, a player who wanted out at the start of the year, along with Hamish Stewart, Jacob Halangahu, Dylan Egan and Ryan and Toby Couchman.
NRL 2026 RD24NRL 2026 RD24 Wests Tigers v St. George Illawarra Dragons – Hamish Stewart, Try,Source: Supplied
Remember the Dragons boast one of the largest rugby league nurseries in the country – an expanse covering nearly 10,000 juniors, from Arncliffe to Batemans Bay – but there’s an argument the club has lost sight of its pathways over the past decade.
Officials are working hard to capitalise on the big catchment once again, and Young and his team are arrow-focused on ensuring the players who do come into first grade are nurtured properly.
Take Hamish Stewart. A prodigious Gerringong junior who only shot up in stature during his SG Ball years, the 22-year-old is spending this year’s campaign in the unfamiliar position of backrower. But Young ultimately sees him as a long-term lock, and will move him when the time is right.
Stewart is buying in, and his blistering form shows it.
“I feel like I’ve found my feet there on the edge,” Stewart says.
“Things take time. Deano has come in, and to adjust to his systems and things like that, it takes time. People need to realise that but they are seeing the benefits from it now – what we’re doing. It has been really pleasing to see.
“Deano always says that you always start your next week how you end your last halve so we want to build momentum as we go into next year. There’s a lot of excitement around the club and it’s good – it’s good for the fans, they have stuck with us. There’s better times ahead.”
THE CULTURAL ISSUE YOUNG IS EAGER TO FIX
It’s a sad indictment, but the one turnover greater than coaches at St George Illawarra in recent years has been players.
Forget Steve Price, Paul McGregor, Anthony Griffin and Shane Flanagan. The club has lost some crucial playing talent and burned bridges along the way. Think Ronald Volkman and his reneged contract, or Zac Lomax and Ben Hunt, who both agitated to go elsewhere.
And then there’s the ones that got away without being able to properly develop. Reece Robson, Jackson Ford, Bud Sullivan, Lachlan Ilias, Jonah Glover – many more.
Tellingly, in previous tenures, recruitment was cared for solely by the head coach. Now it is a shared process.
For Young, the time is ripe to help foster a change of culture at the Dragons – not necessarily to address mistakes of the past, but to promote a happy playing environment in the future.
“Some of the other clubs have probably done it better than us, but Tim Watsford, Scott Stewart and myself, we want to make sure that when people come through this club, they leave loving the Dragons,” Young says.
“My thing is about treating people well. Even someone asked me before about the players that are leaving at the end of the season… If you treat them well and you treat them the right way, then they’ll still try for you.”
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Young’s sentiments ring true looking at some of the Dragons stronger performers in recent weeks: Emre Guler, Mathew Feagai, Tyrell Sloan are all headed elsewhere at season’s end, yet they keep buying in.
The club has also reconnected with its former stars in a move that is having far-reaching positives. Once a month, football manager Stewart invites all ex-players and staff to the Dragons new $65 million facility to train in the morning, go for a coffee and watch the current squad train.
For Young, the building blocks are in place for this sleeping giant to flourish once again. But tough days are still to come.
“It has been a really tough period for the club. A really tough period for a long period of time. But, I remember standing at last year’s end of season function and everyone’s standing there going, ‘Next year is going to be good with all these kids coming through’. Round eight, the coach gets sacked and we haven’t won a game,” Young reflects.
“Yep, great kids. Good people, good players. Good signings. But what have we done? All we’ve done is the media has given us a wrap about our recruitment. We’ve done f**k all.
“My biggest thing is you’ve got to earn what you get. They’ll be earning it. November 2.”