We’ll give the first half a tick. In the latter half, we’ll apply a cross.
Shane Flanagan, the new coach of St George Illawarra, told his team this while evaluating their first game in his role against South Sydney.
The annual Charity Shield game saw the Dragons lose 28–6, but before halftime, Flanagan substituted most of his stars, locking the score at 6–6.
“I felt like we played a really good, competitive game in the first half with our team, and in the second half, it just kind of shows where we are with our little ones,” Flanagan remarked.
They were completely overwhelmed in the second half and are not yet ready for it. However, I believe it was a good hit out in the first half when we had our strongest team playing.
Both teams scored tries off of mistakes made by the opposition, and there were some outstanding defensive blocks.
After Dragons fullback Tyrell Sloan fumbled the ball after a driving tackle by Lachlan Ilias close to his own line, Jacob Host scored the opening try for the Rabbitohs.
Flanagan feels that Sloan ought to have scored at the other end himself. After breaching the Rabbitohs’ defense, he produced another opportunity for a try, but the Dragons were unable to take advantage of it.
Flanagan stated, “Offensively, we could have been a little sharper and we should have nailed a few tries.” Sloanie ought to have picked up the ball and crossed the try line.
We missed a few opportunities in the first half because he made another escape and couldn’t find the correct ball while carrying two defenders.
“If we clean it up and, to be fair, Souths didn’t run the ball over the try line, we dropped it and they picked it up, then we should have scored two or three tries. Sadly, that was a tender moment.
Because Zac Lomax was having back spasms, Flanagan was unable to test moving him and Sloan between fullback and wing as scheduled.
He did, however, state that new recruit Raymond Faitala-Mariner would play in the Pre-season Challenge match against Wests Tigers the following weekend and that he expects Lomax to be available.
Regarding Lomax, Flanagan remarked, “He did okay [on the wing], but he struggled with a bit of a back injury the whole game so we probably didn’t see the best of him.”
It’s still an ongoing project. There was no point putting him back there [at fullback] since he wasn’t moving all that well.
“The main goal was to give him some game time and let him go. It wasn’t an injury; he was merely experiencing back spasms. I simply never reattached him.
We’ll watch him over the course of the week. It would be nice to believe that he could play next week against the Tigers.
