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The Dragons have won just two from nine under Young. Earlier this week, star centre Valentine Holmes was asked about the prospects of Young being St George Illawarra\u2019s next coach. <\/p>\n
He said the fact that big-name players like Scott Drinkwater, Keaon Koloamatangi and Connor Watson have signed on for next year was a clue. <\/p>\n
\u201cProbably because they know who it\u2019s going to be,\u201d Holmes said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be Youngy. I hope it is, and we\u2019ve seen Drinky come out and say something similar and we all back Youngy. We know how much he loves this club and I think he deserves the first crack at it.\u201d <\/p>\n
NRL 2026 RD11NRL 2026 RD11 Penrith Panthers v St. George Illawarra Dragons – Dean YoungSource: Supplied<\/p>\n
Drinkwater worked with Young when he was an assistant at the Cowboys in 2021 and has been impressed with what he\u2019s done at the Dragons from afar. <\/p>\n
\u201cI do watch a little bit closely now,\u201d Drinkwater told the NewsWire this week. <\/p>\n
\u201cYoungy\u2019s picking players who are defensive effort-based players and who go after the game that way. They\u2019re in games a lot now and it\u2019s much tighter than what they have been. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a great coach and I hope he gets the job. <\/p>\n
\u201cFingers crossed he gets it. But if not, I can\u2019t dwell on it. Whoever comes in to coach, I can\u2019t be sulking about that. We\u2019ll see what happens, but fingers crossed Youngy gets it.\u201d <\/p>\n
But reporter Michael Carayannis wasn\u2019t as confident as Holmes and Drinkwater and thinks there will be no decision made by the board next Monday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing really done yet but he (Young) does have the support of the playing group,\u201d Carayannis said on NRL 360 on Wednesday night. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be Dean Young or Ben Hornby, there\u2019s no-one else.\u201d Young and Hornby won a competition at the Dragons in 2010 under Wayne Bennett. <\/p>\n
Panthers looking to LOCK down key stars | 04:02<\/p>\n
Hornby has been working with the master coach at Souths as an assistant and has been talking to St George about the head coaching role. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say Dean\u2019s the slight favourite because he\u2019s in the building and the players do love him, there\u2019s no doubt about that,\u201d Carayannis said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m sure if you asked Keaon Kolomatangi (who plays at Souths) who he\u2019d want to be the coach, he\u2019d say Ben Hornby.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cDean Young\u2019s got his nose in front, it just feels that way,\u201d fellow reporter Brent Read said. <\/p>\n
Former St George player Gorden Tallis agreed and said the Dragons had improved under Young despite registering just two wins since he took over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The St George Illawarra board are set to meet on Monday to have further discussions about the club\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-803578","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\/803578","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=803578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}