{"id":554581,"date":"2026-03-21T08:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T08:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/554581\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T08:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T08:44:08","slug":"dragons-coach-shane-flanagan-reveals-return-date-for-loko-pasifiki-tonga-following-hospital-discharge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/554581\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragons coach Shane Flanagan reveals return date for Loko Pasifiki Tonga following hospital discharge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shane Flanagan expects Loko Pasifiki Tonga will return to playing only a couple of weeks after being rushed to hospital following a scary training incident.<\/p>\n

The St George Illawarra forward was stretchered into an ambulance after hurting his neck in a tackle at Thursday’s field session, but was later cleared of serious injury.<\/p>\n

Pasifiki Tonga is unlikely to play reserve grade against Parramatta tomorrow as originally planned, yet coach Flanagan has been buoyed by his progress thus far.<\/p>\n

Dragons forward cleared of serious injury<\/a><\/p>\n

A Dragons training session ends with a player stretchered off and assisted from the ground into an ambulance before being rushed to hospital.<\/p>\n

“He’s fine, he’s back doing some rehab running today. He’s a bit sore but he’ll be OK. We’ll just reassess him next week,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’re lucky that there’s no damage and he’ll be right in the next week or two.”<\/p>\n

Back-up hooker Jacob Liddle, one of the Dragons’ best players last year, returns from a hamstring issue to face the Eels for his first game of the NRL season.<\/p>\n

“Jacob will bring some energy. I don’t expect him to play huge minutes tomorrow,” Flanagan said.<\/p>\n

“It was a pretty nasty injury but he’s well and truly over that.”<\/p>\n

The Red V are winless through two rounds, but took Canterbury to extra time in Las Vegas and led reigning runners-up Melbourne after an hour last week.<\/p>\n

Flanagan wants the Dragons to take advantage of their opportunities at CommBank Stadium this weekend.<\/p>\n

“The way the game’s going, you need to be able to control possession and have blocks of possession and do well in that period,” he said.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

“We didn’t do well in that period (against Melbourne). We had eight errors in yardage and you just can’t do that.”<\/p>\n

Parramatta snapped a four-game losing streak and scored their first win of the Jason Ryles era in the corresponding fixture against the Dragons last April.<\/p>\n

The Eels have improved since that golden-point victory, and enter tomorrow’s game on the back of a win over reigning premiers Brisbane.<\/p>\n

“We’re a lot more connected as a group and we’re very clear on our roles within the team,” said hooker Ryley Smith.<\/p>\n

“If we go out there on Sunday, and for the rest of the season, and just nail our role then I think we’ll win a lot more games than lose.”<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shane Flanagan expects Loko Pasifiki Tonga will return to playing only a couple of weeks after being rushed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,4027,272109,158,159,85,4563],"class_list":["post-554581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dragons","tag-loko-pasifiki-tonga","tag-nrl","tag-rugby-league","tag-sports","tag-st-george-illawarra-dragons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554581","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=554581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}