General Warriors Preseason 2024

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thankyoupancake
OP•2h ago


By Andrew Webster
When St George Illawarra were getting serious last year about signing Shane Flanagan as coach, there was determined pushback from the St George side of the joint-venture.
It had less to do with Flanagan’s past at arch rivals Cronulla, including the 2011 supplements scandal, and more to do with his son, Kyle.
Some directors feared that if they signed the father then the son would soon follow.
When Shane signed with the Dragons in June for three years, it evidently didn’t come with a “No Kyle” clause because, by September, his son had also been signed for two.
In that moment, it was clear the Dragons board and management had handed the keys to the head coach to do whatever he felt necessary to flick the switch on this most frustrating of football teams.
That’s why it was reassuring to hear what Flanagan had to say following an opposed session against Manly last week about his ambitions for the 2024 season.
“Our focus is 2025,” he said. “We’ve made some changes in 2024 and we’re still looking for some players, but our real focus will be for 2025 and 2026. The goal is to compete right to the end and be in the semi-final race right to the end. We’re going to be a side that’s hard to beat and we’re going to try not to beat ourselves.”
Now that’s different: a coach admitting before the season starts not to expect too much. May as well book that trip to the Maldives in September, Dragons fans. Not much doing at home.
Flanagan’s candour, though, is to be admired. This is the first year of the club’s most important rebuild. It doesn’t have too many left to get right before fans start walking away.
Dragons bosses held on too long with Paul McGregor, missed the ball by a metre with their Anthony Griffin air-swing, and are now relying on Flanagan to save their football side.
People judge teams too soon on two elements: their ladder position and the quality of the player they can sign.
Flanagan was criticised during the off-season for failing to pluck a sizeable name from the player market. He missed out on Cowboys half Tom Dearden and Warriors prop Addin Fonua-Blake in the space of a day back in December.
He couldn’t entice St Helens star Jack Welsby out of the UK, and not even $1.2 million a season could get Roosters centre Joseph Manu even remotely interested.
The Dragons signed Warriors playmaker Ronald Volkman but club medicos didn’t check under the bonnet before agreeing to terms and he’s been cut loose because of an existing shoulder injury.
So the 2024 gains column looks like this: Hame Sele (Rabbitohs), Kyle Flanagan (Bulldogs), Tom Eisenhuth (Storm), Corey Allan (Roosters), Jesse Marschke (Bears NSW Cup) and Raymond Faitala-Mariner (Bulldogs). Allan suffered a torn ACL at pre-season training and will miss the season.
The inability to sign any marquee players isn’t a reflection on Flanagan but the club and how far it’s fallen after years of dysfunction.
This is the problem with mediocrity: soon enough you’ll give off the same stench as the Tigers.
Superstars aren’t always the answer. Paying well over market value for a marquee player or two might generate favourable publicity in the pre-season, but it comes back to bite you when you’re in the grind of winter.
Remember how we were all talking about a Tigers’ finals appearance a year ago because they had signed hooker Api Koroisau and back-rower Isaiah Papali’i?
The last thing the Dragons need is a sugar hit. They need a slow, methodical rebuild, starting with a team that might not make the eight but will always compete, as Flanagan indicated.
So ladder position shouldn’t mean much this year, although I’ve got no doubt that Flanagan was lowering expectations around himself when he asked fans not judge his side on what happens in 2024.
He keeps saying all the right things publicly about Ben Hunt, but that doesn’t mean the captain and halfback still doesn’t want out of the final two years of his contract after requesting a release last year.
He also argues Hunt’s running game will complement Kyle Flanagan’s so-called game management.
Fathers coaching their sons is happening more and more in the NRL for some reason. However, it’s tricky when the player isn’t Nathan Cleary, but a fringe first-grader plagued by doubt.
Flanagan wants the best for his son, who debuted under him in 2018 when he was coaching the Sharks before rocky stints at the Roosters and, more recently, the Bulldogs.
But each time Flanagan made suggestions to the Roosters and Bulldogs about how they should play his son, it did more harm than good and the pressure on Kyle became unfair. Nobody wants to see a young player break down with emotion like he did during a May 2021 media conference when the Bulldogs dropped him.
According to Shane Flanagan, the long-term strategy with Kyle was to turn him into a hooker – but you could see a path opening up to the No.6 jumper as soon he signed.
Loading
The Dragons, for some reason, had released Jayden Sullivan from the final two years of his contract to allow him to sign with the Tigers. Another local junior cut adrift.
The club did so knowing five-eighth Talatau Amone was still facing serious assault, stalking and intimidation charges following a rooftop hammer attack on a tradie in October 2022.
If Amone was found guilty, he was looking at either jail time or, at the very least, an NRL deregistration. He dodged jail but a two-year corrections order served to him in December was enough for the NRL to tear up his contract.
Amone has appealed his conviction and wants to come back to prove his “haters” wrong, but the Flanagans have just as much to prove.
This is the father’s chance to turn his son into the player he thinks he can be. It’s also the father’s chance, in his first head coaching job since 2018, to show that rugby league hasn’t passed him by.
Every Dragons coach since Wayne Bennett has been coaching for his life, chopping and changing teams and the way they play.
Flanagan wants sustained success and, in doing so, every St George Illawarra stakeholder — owners, directors, management, and especially weary fans — needs to give him time.
Which, by the way, starts now
 
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Up the guttz said:
www.foxsports.com.au

‘It was torture’: SJ opens up on ‘lonely place’... and final pledge that sparked stunning revival

‘It was torture’: SJ opens up on ‘lonely place’... and final pledge behind stunning revival
www.foxsports.com.au www.foxsports.com.au
Click to expand...
“Imagine if the last 13 years have just been the entree to what I’m really going to do in life. This is just setting me up to do something really special post-footy and maybe something a little bit more meaningful.”

SJ for Prime Minister!
 
Noitall said:
thankyoupancake
OP•2h ago


By Andrew Webster
When St George Illawarra were getting serious last year about signing Shane Flanagan as coach, there was determined pushback from the St George side of the joint-venture.
It had less to do with Flanagan’s past at arch rivals Cronulla, including the 2011 supplements scandal, and more to do with his son, Kyle.
Some directors feared that if they signed the father then the son would soon follow.
When Shane signed with the Dragons in June for three years, it evidently didn’t come with a “No Kyle” clause because, by September, his son had also been signed for two.
In that moment, it was clear the Dragons board and management had handed the keys to the head coach to do whatever he felt necessary to flick the switch on this most frustrating of football teams.
That’s why it was reassuring to hear what Flanagan had to say following an opposed session against Manly last week about his ambitions for the 2024 season.
“Our focus is 2025,” he said. “We’ve made some changes in 2024 and we’re still looking for some players, but our real focus will be for 2025 and 2026. The goal is to compete right to the end and be in the semi-final race right to the end. We’re going to be a side that’s hard to beat and we’re going to try not to beat ourselves.”
Now that’s different: a coach admitting before the season starts not to expect too much. May as well book that trip to the Maldives in September, Dragons fans. Not much doing at home.
Flanagan’s candour, though, is to be admired. This is the first year of the club’s most important rebuild. It doesn’t have too many left to get right before fans start walking away.
Dragons bosses held on too long with Paul McGregor, missed the ball by a metre with their Anthony Griffin air-swing, and are now relying on Flanagan to save their football side.
People judge teams too soon on two elements: their ladder position and the quality of the player they can sign.
Flanagan was criticised during the off-season for failing to pluck a sizeable name from the player market. He missed out on Cowboys half Tom Dearden and Warriors prop Addin Fonua-Blake in the space of a day back in December.
He couldn’t entice St Helens star Jack Welsby out of the UK, and not even $1.2 million a season could get Roosters centre Joseph Manu even remotely interested.
The Dragons signed Warriors playmaker Ronald Volkman but club medicos didn’t check under the bonnet before agreeing to terms and he’s been cut loose because of an existing shoulder injury.
So the 2024 gains column looks like this: Hame Sele (Rabbitohs), Kyle Flanagan (Bulldogs), Tom Eisenhuth (Storm), Corey Allan (Roosters), Jesse Marschke (Bears NSW Cup) and Raymond Faitala-Mariner (Bulldogs). Allan suffered a torn ACL at pre-season training and will miss the season.
The inability to sign any marquee players isn’t a reflection on Flanagan but the club and how far it’s fallen after years of dysfunction.
This is the problem with mediocrity: soon enough you’ll give off the same stench as the Tigers.
Superstars aren’t always the answer. Paying well over market value for a marquee player or two might generate favourable publicity in the pre-season, but it comes back to bite you when you’re in the grind of winter.
Remember how we were all talking about a Tigers’ finals appearance a year ago because they had signed hooker Api Koroisau and back-rower Isaiah Papali’i?
The last thing the Dragons need is a sugar hit. They need a slow, methodical rebuild, starting with a team that might not make the eight but will always compete, as Flanagan indicated.
So ladder position shouldn’t mean much this year, although I’ve got no doubt that Flanagan was lowering expectations around himself when he asked fans not judge his side on what happens in 2024.
He keeps saying all the right things publicly about Ben Hunt, but that doesn’t mean the captain and halfback still doesn’t want out of the final two years of his contract after requesting a release last year.
He also argues Hunt’s running game will complement Kyle Flanagan’s so-called game management.
Fathers coaching their sons is happening more and more in the NRL for some reason. However, it’s tricky when the player isn’t Nathan Cleary, but a fringe first-grader plagued by doubt.
Flanagan wants the best for his son, who debuted under him in 2018 when he was coaching the Sharks before rocky stints at the Roosters and, more recently, the Bulldogs.
But each time Flanagan made suggestions to the Roosters and Bulldogs about how they should play his son, it did more harm than good and the pressure on Kyle became unfair. Nobody wants to see a young player break down with emotion like he did during a May 2021 media conference when the Bulldogs dropped him.
According to Shane Flanagan, the long-term strategy with Kyle was to turn him into a hooker – but you could see a path opening up to the No.6 jumper as soon he signed.
Loading
The Dragons, for some reason, had released Jayden Sullivan from the final two years of his contract to allow him to sign with the Tigers. Another local junior cut adrift.
The club did so knowing five-eighth Talatau Amone was still facing serious assault, stalking and intimidation charges following a rooftop hammer attack on a tradie in October 2022.
If Amone was found guilty, he was looking at either jail time or, at the very least, an NRL deregistration. He dodged jail but a two-year corrections order served to him in December was enough for the NRL to tear up his contract.
Amone has appealed his conviction and wants to come back to prove his “haters” wrong, but the Flanagans have just as much to prove.
This is the father’s chance to turn his son into the player he thinks he can be. It’s also the father’s chance, in his first head coaching job since 2018, to show that rugby league hasn’t passed him by.
Every Dragons coach since Wayne Bennett has been coaching for his life, chopping and changing teams and the way they play.
Flanagan wants sustained success and, in doing so, every St George Illawarra stakeholder — owners, directors, management, and especially weary fans — needs to give him time.
Which, by the way, starts now
Click to expand...
“Our focus is 2025,” he said. “We’ve made some changes in 2024 and we’re still looking for some players, but our real focus will be for 2025 and 2026.

Wouldn’t want to back this team to beat the Tigers 🤣
 
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Worried3death said:
There's been agony and ecstasy over the 29 years. In the big context, I really thought we were going to be a powerhouse club when we started, and when it all turned to shit it was so disappointing that it made the Dan Anderson rebuild years so much sweeter. We got respect back.
Cycle kind of repeated until 2011, our victories in the dark years were somehow sweeter being underdogs.
Towards the end of last year when we were expected to win and ground out the 2 points it got a bit stale, not much of a sport if you know who's going to win. Until the epic Knights final that is, probably my proudest fan moment.
Still have a nagging feeling we haven't arrived as a serious club until that first premiership. After that who knows, we might get arrogant and turn into Penrith fans. My old man is one of them, an insufferable toothless cunt.
Don't think I'll ever stop supporting them though tbh.
Click to expand...
thanks, Worried, 'insufferable toothless cunt' has now gone to the top of my list of insults. Every time I say it to myself I start sniggering. I shall be using it regularly - not on here of course!
 
Wrighty said:
I have this weird half a thought that if we win the premiership this year I might quit being a warriors fan. I kind of peversely enjoyed the old days where we finished 10th to 12th every year. It is hard to explain what I am feeling. I like supporting a modest club. If we do win the premiership I hope we don't attract a whole bunch of fans to this site who are like All Blacks fans who only support the All Blacks because they win all the time.
I don't think I am making any sense.
Carry on. As you were.

PS the lowest days on my journey were the 70 point loss to Melbourne and the day Matt Lodge left and we paid him all sorts of money for weird reasons.
Click to expand...
I know what you mean Wrighty, but I suspect a man of your integrity would not quit being a Warriors fan - although you may not enjoy it as much. More likely, had they just won the Grand Final when you developed an interest, you would have picked another team to support and then stuck with them - although holding a secret place in your heart for the Warriors.
 
pbrown011235 said:
I know what you mean Wrighty, but I suspect a man of your integrity would not quit being a Warriors fan - although you may not enjoy it as much. More likely, had they just won the Grand Final when you developed an interest, you would have picked another team to support and then stuck with them - although holding a secret place in your heart for the Warriors.
Click to expand...
Our current coaches, staff and players are going to turn us into a powerhouse and I’m going to love every second of it.
 
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pbrown011235 said:
thanks, Worried, 'insufferable toothless cunt' has now gone to the top of my list of insults. Every time I say it to myself I start sniggering. I shall be using it regularly - not on here of course!
Click to expand...
Well, that went well! I would never have believed how many people have no sense of humour.
 
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