{"id":395724,"date":"2026-04-24T17:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/395724\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T17:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:12:14","slug":"michael-ennis-speaks-on-dragons-letting-him-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/395724\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Ennis speaks on Dragons letting him go"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/players\/michael-ennis\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Ennis<\/a> has opened up about being let go as an assistant coach at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/nrl\/teams\/st-george-illawarra-dragons\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">St George Illawarra Dragons<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ennis was in the running to take up the role of interim coach, after it was announced on Monday morning that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/coaches\/shane-flanagan\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Shane Flanagan<\/a> would be departing the club.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The interim position was ultimately handed to fellow assistant coach <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/players\/dean-young\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dean Young<\/a>, who in his first day at the top job made some bold decisions, one of which was letting Ennis go.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was disappointing in the first part that Shane (Flanagan) and I are obviously very close, and to see how difficult it&#8217;s been for him as a close friend and a great mentor and a great coach,\u201d Ennis told the Fox Sports panel on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was tough on Monday&#8230; 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&#8217;s in and the results they&#8217;ve had, they needed to make some change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI respect him for the conversations that he had,\u201d Ennis said to Fox League about Young.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(I) can really do nothing more than to wish them well, there&#8217;s some great people at the Dragons and whilst results haven&#8217;t been there, there&#8217;s great things happening there and I&#8217;m really looking forward to watching them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hope Dean does a great job with them which I&#8217;m sure he will.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ennis has been at the Dragons since September, meaning the ex player was yet to see the Dragons win during his tenure after the team suffered 11 straight losses.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Despite the decision to show Ennis the door, the two former assistant coaches are on good terms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat one was hard, mate, to be honest,\u201d Young said on the decision to part ways with Ennis<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe toughest part of the job is telling people that there&#8217;s no job here for them. I&#8217;ve known Mick for a long time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnfortunately he&#8217;s part of the change. We need a circuit breaker. We need things to look different. We need things to feel different.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Ennis has opened up about being let go as an assistant coach at the St George Illawarra&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-395724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}