{"id":625620,"date":"2026-04-23T11:45:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T11:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/625620\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T11:45:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T11:45:25","slug":"michael-ennis-opens-up-on-st-george-illawarra-dragons-axing-as-assistant-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/625620\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Ennis opens up on St George Illawarra Dragons axing as assistant coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former St George Illawarra Dragons assistant Michael Ennis has opened up on a \u201cdisappointing\u201d week where the former premiership player was told his services were no longer required by the club<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Watch every game of every round of the Premiership Season LIVE with no ad-breaks during play on FOX LEAGUE, available on Kayo Sports | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With Shane Flanagan\u2019s departure from the club on Monday and Dean Young\u2019s appointment to the interim position later in the evening, Young informed Ennis he was part of the change needed at the club and as a result was dismissed from his position.<\/p>\n

Ennis had only been part of Flanagan\u2019s coaching staff since September last season, following the club\u2019s disappointing 15th placed finish.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Fox League\u2019s \ufeffpre-game show on Thursday night, Ennis opened up on the whirlwind of the week he\u2019s had following the change at St George Illawarra.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was disappointing in the first part that Shane (Flanagan) and I are obviously very close, and to see how difficult it\u2019s been for him as a close friend and a great mentor and a great coach,\u201d Ennis told the panel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was tough on Monday… and then obviously disappointing after having a conversation with Dean (Young) because I love coaching, and I thoroughly understand that with the position that the club\u2019s in and the results they\u2019ve had, they needed to make some change.\u201d<\/p>\n

The change at the Dragons didn\u2019t stop at Ennis though.<\/p>\n

Dragons General Manager of Football Ben Harran was shown the exit door with Flanagan on Monday morning, with developments over the past few days revealing premiership winning player and ex-Dragon Ben Creagh will take over the role.<\/p>\n

Young has also brought in the recently retired Tom Eisenhuth and Dragons NSW cup coach Willie Talau into the NRL set up as assistants.<\/p>\n

Drinkwater reportedly on the move south | 00:42<\/p>\n

Tough and sweeping changes also led to tough discussions, which the new Dragons interim addressed in his media conference<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat one was hard, mate, to be honest,\u201d Young said on the decision to part ways with Ennis<\/p>\n

\u201cThe toughest part of the job is telling people that there\u2019s no job here for them. I\u2019ve known Mick for a long time. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately he\u2019s part of the change. We need a circuit breaker. We need things to look different. We need things to feel different.\u201d<\/p>\n

However it seems mutual respect between the two hasn\u2019t been lost, with Ennis and Young both wishing each other well following the split.<\/p>\n

\u201cI respect him for the conversations that he had,\u201d Ennis said to Fox League about Young.<\/p>\n

\u201c(I) can really do nothing more than to wish them well, there\u2019s some great people at the Dragons and whilst results haven\u2019t been there, there\u2019s great things happening there and I\u2019m really looking forward to watching them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope Dean does a great job with them which I\u2019m sure he will.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems Ennis is at peace with Young\u2019s decisions towards sweeping changes.<\/p>\n

The former Dragon believes the changes, including the one which cost him his position at the club, will lead to positive results.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor sure, I mean Shane\u2019s certainly got his style and how he went about it and Dean\u2019s been really open about wanting to change some things up and felt like it needed change,\u201d Ennis told Fox League.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s (Young) done the interim role before, and he\u2019s obviously worked with these players for a long period of time over the last couple of years so he knows them well and he knows what he feels needs to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those immediate changes also included handing 20-year old half Kade Reed his NRL debut, leading to Kyle Flanagan being dropped to the bench.<\/p>\n

He will make his debut in the Dragons\u2019 highly anticipated ANZAC day clash against the Sydney Roosters at Allianz Stadium on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former St George Illawarra Dragons assistant Michael Ennis has opened up on a \u201cdisappointing\u201d week where the former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-625620","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\/625620","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=625620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}