the Dragons fell to their sixth consecutive loss to begin the 2026 season<\/a>, and a decision by the club\u2019s powerbrokers could potentially be made as early as next week.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/poster-fallback.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Despite eventually walking away with the loss against the Manly Sea Eagles, Flanagan was impressed with parts of the club\u2019s performance and they even managed to take the lead within the opening minutes of the second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was definitely an improvement. I thought we competed really hard. (If) a few things would have gone our way, we (would\u2019ve) scraped home for a win,\u201d Flanagan said post-match.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was an opportunity for us to score a try just before half-time, we fumbled it\u2026we had our opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think because of the confidence is probably low, those types of things sometimes don\u2019t go our way but I thought they competed really hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they fought at different stages throughout the whole year. I thought tonight they fought hard. If they just nailed two of those things, it\u2019s a different story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flanagan made the surprise decision to watch Friday\u2019s game from the sidelines, delcaring: \u201cI don\u2019t want to hide in the coach\u2019s box\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m here to fight. I\u2019m here to win,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m on the sideline with the team fighting as hard as I can. I didn\u2019t want to hide in the coach\u2019s box. They have cameras going up there. They can get me as much as they could have got me for 80 minutes if they wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foran hails gritty Manly victory | 06:19<\/p>\n
Questioned about his future, Flanagan provided a one-word response about whether or not he was confident in the people who are set to decide his future.<\/p>\n
\u201cYep,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Pressed about it, Flanagan added, \u201cAll I know is I\u2019ve got a job here to do. It\u2019s not just about winning football games.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s some other stuff to go with it about educating young players, educating young men (on) how to be NRL players (and) managing a squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got some new players coming next year but we\u2019ve got to win this year, so that\u2019s part of my job as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continuing to speak, Flanagan admitted he is in unfamiliar territory, having never experienced anything like this throughout his career as an NRL head coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never experienced this. Never lost four or five in a row so it is different, especially for the start of the season but all I can ask is the players put in a max effort or real good effort,\u201d a depleted Flanagan said post-match.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means they\u2019re playing for me and I thought tonight they did put in a real good effort and they had the class to compete. Tommy [Tom Trbojevic] is probably the difference in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manly score INSANE 100m try | 01:32<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, co-captain Damien Cook defended Flanagan despite reports emerging that the club had decided not to negotiate contract extensions with off-contract members of the playing squad.<\/p>\n
This saw the club rescind an extension to Cook, who foxsports.com.au understood was set to be all but confirmed to re-sign with the Red V for at least another season until the end of 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe group that we\u2019ve got here have had a really good attitude after eveythying that\u2019s happened last week and how we came in, I thought we just jumped straight into it,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBacks against the wall, we\u2019ve done everything we needed to do during the week. When it comes down to it, we\u2019re the ones on the weekend out there playing and we\u2019re just not getting it done at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo his [Shane Flanagan] rope should be long because he\u2019s not the issue and we\u2019re not doing it out there and wee need to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Confident that he will remain on as head coach of the St George Illawarra Dragons, a defiant Shane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-597873","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\/597873","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=597873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}