{"id":346755,"date":"2025-12-14T04:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/346755\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T04:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:24:08","slug":"dragons-keen-on-extending-cook-as-co-captain-praises-liddle-partnership-nrl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/346755\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragons keen on extending Cook as co-captain praises Liddle partnership – NRL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entering the final 12 months of his current contract with the St George Illawarra Dragons<\/a>, the club’s co-captain, Damien Cook<\/a>, may find himself playing a little longer in the Red V jersey.<\/p>\n

Uncontracted beyond the conclusion of the 2026 NRL<\/a> season, multiple sources have told\u00a0Zero Tackle\u00a0that the Dragons are keen on extending Cook, but a decision depends on how well he holds up next season and if he wants to continue playing.<\/p>\n

Arriving at the club at the start of the year after a nine-year stint with the South Sydney Rabbitohs<\/a>, the 34-year-old proved that he still belongs on the field and created a formidable one-two combination with Jacob Liddle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 24 matches, the 17-time NSW Blues<\/a> representative made 1,018 tackles at a 95% efficiency rate, ran for over 1,200 metres and was a leader on and off the field, helping develop the younger members of the squad.<\/p>\n

“It’s been great. It’s worked really well and I love training alongside him,” Cook said on the younger dummy-half.<\/p>\n

“He comes on and just picks the right times to run and that’s our plan to try them out a little bit in the middle and then when he comes one we can both attack through the middle and get our forwards going.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s a great little plan and no doubt we’ll tinker it a little bit next year as well. We can change it around and you can always adapt to who starts.”<\/p>\n

A four-time international for Australia<\/a>, Cook could easily play for a few more seasons but may transition to playing more of a role from the interchange bench, which would allow the one-two punch with Liddle to continue as the Dragons chase finals success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Entering the final 12 months of his current contract with the St George Illawarra Dragons, the club’s co-captain,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-346755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}