Excitement is building ahead of the opening round of the NRL\u2019s Pre-Season Challenge, with St George Illawarra gearing up to host the Newcastle Knights at Kogarah tomorrow night.<\/p>\n
The Dragons enter the hit out hoping to set a strong tone for the year.<\/p>\n
For head coach Shane Flanagan, the clash marks a welcome shift from weeks of internal match-ups to finally facing outside opposition.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThere comes a time where you need to play against other opposition,\u201d Flanagan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBashing your teammates week after week, day after day has come to an end now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boys are looking forward to it \u2013 especially the young boys getting an opportunity tomorrow. It\u2019s exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flanagan is confident in the squad\u2019s preparation but acknowledges the importance of emerging from the pre-season unscathed as the club eyes a smooth lead in to the Las Vegas season opener.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re definitely fit enough and ready to play, but time will tell,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cInjuries play an important part of it \u2013 we\u2019d like to get through the trials with no injuries. It\u2019d be a blessing in disguise to go to Vegas.\u201d<\/p>\n
With anticipation high and a fresh season beckoning, tomorrow\u2019s match offers Dragons fans an early glimpse of what Flanagan\u2019s revamped side may bring to the 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Excitement is building ahead of the opening round of the NRL\u2019s Pre-Season Challenge, with St George Illawarra gearing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,4495,158,159,4583,85,4563],"class_list":["post-462597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-newcastle-knights","tag-nrl","tag-rugby-league","tag-shane-flanagan","tag-sports","tag-st-george-illawarra-dragons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462597","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=462597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}