The pressure on Shane Flanagan is set to intensify after St George Illawarra slumped to their worst ever start to a season with a 32-0 flogging from North Queensland.<\/p>\n
The Dragons were booed by fans at a half-empty Kogarah on fulltime on Saturday, after what was easily their worst performance of the season.<\/p>\n
The result means they are now winless through their first five games for the first time in history, while the team’s losing streak is now at a record nine dating back to August.<\/p>\n
Jake Clifford of the Cowboys celebrates scoring a try.\u00a0Photo by Mark Metcalfe\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Potentially making matters worse for the Dragons was co-captain and fullback Clint Gutherson limping up the tunnel on fulltime with a leg injury.<\/p>\n
On the flip side, North Queensland now have three straight wins, just weeks after their coach Todd Payten’s job security had appeared as bleak as Flanagan’s following a 0-2 start.<\/p>\n
Flanagan now needs a revival of that kind from his Dragons, after he conceded to AAP on Friday he was “a realist” and knew he needed wins to remain coach.<\/p>\n
In two-and-a-bit seasons at the club he has blooded a number of young forwards, but the Dragons’ finals drought is now at risk of reaching an eighth year. <\/p>\n
They had at least been in all of their first four losses until late in the game, but were never in the contest on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Scott Drinkwater and Jaxon Purdue blitzed them, with Drinkwater kicking a 40-20 before the Cowboys’ first, then slicing through the Dragons’ left edge two plays later to score.<\/p>\n
The Dragons’ best attacking raid in the first half ended when Dan Atkinson kicked on the second tackle, which was easily scooped up by Drinkwater.<\/p>\n
Moments later it was 10-0 when Jake Clifford offloaded for Purdue to go 65 metres and score, before Clifford later grubber-kicked for Purdue’s second on halftime.<\/p>\n
The Dragons could count themselves somewhat unlucky in the lead-up to Purdue’s second, with David Fale penalised for an extended boot to Murray Taulagi’s neck as he leapt to catch a bomb.<\/p>\n
Nothing summed up the Dragons’ day more than a 90-metre Braidon Burns try, when a wayward Lyhkan King-Togia pass went to ground from a Dragons scrum.<\/p>\n
Making matters worse for the Dragons was the fact that came while the Cowboys were down to 12 men, with Reuben Cotter sin-binned for a professional foul.<\/p>\n
King-Togia in particular had a poor afternoon in place of the concussed Kyle Flanagan, while Atkinson’s kicking game was below par, with multiple grubbers going dead.<\/p>\n
In contrast, Clifford was great at No.6 for the Cowboys, and Purdue had a field day outside him.<\/p>\n
The centre finished with 189 metres to go with his two tries, and also sent Taulagi over for one in the second half.<\/p>\n
Burns and Sam McIntyre both limped off with ankle injuries in the win, the only sour note for the Cowboys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pressure on Shane Flanagan is set to intensify after St George Illawarra slumped to their worst ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-584784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584784","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=584784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}