Shane Flanagan’s future as St George Illawarra coach is in the balance after the Dragons’ winless start to the season extended to a sixth game with a 28-18 loss to Manly.<\/p>\n
On a day where the Dragons merchandise van crashed on the way to WIN Stadium, Flanagan swapped the coach’s box for the sideline in Wollongong.<\/p>\n
With him pacing the touchline for 80 minutes, the Dragons showed some spirit to fight back from 16-0 down and even led by two at one stage.<\/p>\n
But ultimately the Sea Eagles’ class out wide shone through, with Reuben Garrick bagging a double and Tom Trbojevic scoring one try and setting another up.<\/p>\n
Flanagan has been a man under pressure all week, with a three-week block against Manly, South Sydney and Sydney Roosters before a round-nine bye likely to be tenure defining.<\/p>\n
With Shane Flanagan pacing the touchline for 80 minutes, the Dragons showed some spirit to fight back from 16-0 down but couldn’t get the win.\u00a0Mark Metcalfe\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Dragons were clearly an improved side on last week’s insipid 32-0 flogging at the hands of North Queensland.<\/p>\n
But ultimately, it was a series of old-fashioned coach killers that extended the club’s worst ever losing streak to 10 games, with their last victory back in August.<\/p>\n
Filling in at fullback, Tyrell Sloan dropped a ball on attack before Manly’s first try, and then failed to stop a 40-20 in the lead up to the Sea Eagles’ second.<\/p>\n
The Dragons let Manly go 100 metres from the kick off through their third to Garrick, and at that point the Sea Eagles were beating the clock while up 16-0.<\/p>\n
And then after getting back to 16-12 down, winger Setu Tu dropped a ball over the line on halftime under pressure from Trbojevic.<\/p>\n
Tu did well to score after the break and later hold up Tolu Koula to help the Dragons to an 18-16 lead, but there was more pain for the Dragons to come.<\/p>\n
Down 22-18 after Kobe Hetherington crashed over for Manly, the Dragons had a golden chance to take the lead with a huge overlap to their left.<\/p>\n
But instead of putting it through the hands, backrower Luciano Leilua opted to kick and put far too much weight on the ball and sent it dead.<\/p>\n
Manly crossed shortly after with Trbojevic sending Lehi Hopoate over, and with that the game was over as a contest with Kieran Foran two-from-two as a coach.<\/p>\n
The one concern for Manly was an eye gash for Jake Trbojevic.<\/p>\n
After three concussions last year, the veteran passed a HIA but was left unable to open his right eye while requiring stitches.<\/p>\n
Down on the canvas a fortnight ago when Anthony Seibold was sacked, Manly will finished the weekend with a 2-3 record.<\/p>\n
Flanagan desperately needs a similar bounce back from his Dragons next week, with his side again booed on fulltime, albeit this week only by a small smattering of fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shane Flanagan’s future as St George Illawarra coach is in the balance after the Dragons’ winless start to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-597797","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\/597797","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=597797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}