{"id":706335,"date":"2026-05-31T13:14:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/706335\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T13:14:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:14:41","slug":"dragons-295-day-breakthrough-was-four-weeks-in-the-making-one-act-proved-it-could-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/706335\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragons\u2019 295-day breakthrough was \u2018four weeks in the making\u2019… one act proved it could happen"},"content":{"rendered":"

A jubilant St George Illawarra Dragons interim head coach Dean Young stated that the side\u2019s first victory of the season was the perfect reward for a month of hard work.<\/p>\n

Breaking their 295-day losing streak against the Brisbane Broncos at Suncorp Stadium, the Dragons were finally able to secure their first win of the year and Young enjoyed his first victory since taking over the coaching reins from Shane Flanagan.<\/p>\n

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Close to registering their first victory on several occasions over the past month, they embarrassed the Broncos and controlled the contest from the opening kick-off – bar the final 20 minutes, when they heroically fought off a comeback from the home side.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat win\u2019s been four weeks in the making,\u201d Young said post-match after his team were able to celebrate the team song for the first time in nearly one year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve done a lot of things right at training and the last four weeks we\u2019ve played the top four teams in the competition. We\u2019ve played the Roosters, Newcastle, Penrith and the Warriors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve learned is where a top four standard is and we\u2019ve been taking that into our training and then today that was what we want to see moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dragons UPSET Bronx! Snap losing streak | 03:58<\/p>\n

The interim coach praised his side\u2019s commitment to the process despite being winless for 12 rounds to begin the season and believed that their trust in sticking to the game plan was the key difference between them winning and nearly losing on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key is I believe I know what works and what doesn\u2019t work and you come up with a plan and you\u2019ve got to stick to it. We\u2019re sticking to our plan,\u201d Young added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought last week, although we were in the game with nine minutes to go against the team coming second, the players were really disappointed with the way they played. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost the physical battle against the Warriors and our spine didn\u2019t stick to the plan and didn\u2019t stick to the way we trained during the week and they were disappointed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut tonight our back five were outstanding, the forwards wanted to win the physical battle and our spine was outstanding (and) sticking to the plan, sticking to what we did at training.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven at the back end of the game, how they managed it with the Broncos team coming hom which is scary with all the strike they\u2019ve got in their team. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was one set there in particular where Kyle and Cookie managed that set to finish in the corner, just little things like that, so we\u2019ve got more in us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only negative to take out of the match was a calf injury to veteran fullback Clinton Gutherson, who will undergo scans in the coming days to determine the severity of the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A jubilant St George Illawarra Dragons interim head coach Dean Young stated that the side\u2019s first victory of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-706335","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\/706335","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=706335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}