{"id":37760,"date":"2025-08-01T15:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T15:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/37760\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T15:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T15:32:11","slug":"nrl-news-2025-andrew-johns-exclusive-on-dragons-and-lyhkan-king-togia-shane-flanagan-team-selection-and-halves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/37760\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2025, Andrew Johns exclusive on Dragons and Lyhkan King-Togia, Shane Flanagan team selection and halves"},"content":{"rendered":"

League legend Andrew Johns<\/a> has questioned why Dragons<\/a> coach Shane Flanagan<\/a> left struggling young half Lyhkan King-Togia in the team for this week’s game.<\/p>\n

The 20-year-old five-eighth has been in the team since round nine this season and has looked impressive in patches throughout his first proper NRL campaign.<\/p>\n

But King-Togia had a shocker against the Cowboys last week, being stood up by in-form North Queensland halfback Tom Dearden a number of times as the Red V suffered a humiliating loss.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Gus warns Papenhuyzen against $1.5m switch<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Chalmers in disbelief after missing gold in ‘insane’ final<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: F1 star hits back at ‘fabricated’ Verstappen fear<\/a><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Flanagan has once again declined to make a change and bring either of Lachlan Ilias or Jonah Glover into the side for Saturday’s game against Canberra.<\/p>\n

Johns says it was the perfect opportunity to give Glover – who is headed to South Sydney next season – an NRL debut, and let King-Togia have a rest.<\/p>\n

“I’m so surprised there wasn’t a change in the halves this week for the Dragons,” he told Wide World of Sports’ Immortal Behaviour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Lyhkan<\/p>\n

Lyhkan King-Togia of the Dragons.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“Young King-Togia, defensively he looks like he’s hit the wall a little bit. That combination between King-Togia and Luciano (Leilua) was dreadful on the weekend, Tom Dearden put a clinic on.<\/p>\n

“Their reserve graders have won 12 from 13, and their halves Lachlan Ilias and Jonah Glover… I like Ilias as a player, but if you’re going to make a change with King-Togia, Jonah Glover is (also) a running five-eighth.<\/p>\n

“I’ve seen him once or twice and I’ve been really impressed.<\/p>\n

“I’m surprised there wasn’t a change there.”<\/p>\n

Watch the 2025 NRL premiership live and free on Nine and 9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Critics have constantly questioned Flanagan’s team selections this season but the focus has mainly been on his son, Kyle, holding a mortgage on the No.7 jumper while Ilias can’t get a game.<\/p>\n

Club CEO Tim Watsford has already stated 2026 recruit Daniel Atkinson will get first crack at the halfback position next season, and he will likely partner King-Togia in the halves.<\/p>\n

St George Illawarra welcomed respected recruitment chief Daniel Anderson recently and he will be tasked with trying to find a marquee halfback for the club that has struggled to compete for the premiership since 2010.<\/p>\n

Johns says it is important Anderson also focuses on retaining local juniors like King-Togia.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kyle Flanagan, Shane Flanagan, and Lyhkan King-Togia\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“They’ve got some really good young forwards coming through who look tough and hungry,” Johns said.<\/p>\n

“But the big one they need is a half. They’ve said they need a marquee halfback but there’s none out there.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately for clubs like the Dragons and the Knights, to get a marquee player you have to pay overs.<\/p>\n

“But they’ve got to build from within.”<\/p>\n

The Dragons host the Raiders in Wollongong on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"League legend Andrew Johns has questioned why Dragons coach Shane Flanagan left struggling young half Lyhkan King-Togia in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-37760","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\/37760","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=37760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}