Dragons coach Dean Young said ladder position would not have any bearing on motivation for the side’s final three matches of the regular season, while also assuring fans the last-placed St George Illawarra’s best games were still ahead of them.
For the first time in months, the Dragons face the prospect of clawing their way off the bottom of the NRL ladder – at least mathematically – after they held on in a nail-biting finish to beat the Wests Tigers 24-22 at Commbank Stadium on Sunday.
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The Red V posted their first back-to-back wins since August last year, bolstering their shock upset of Cronulla a week earlier with another strong performance.
The win marked Young’s fourth as a first grade coach, having taken over the reins at St George Illawarra from Shane Flanagan in April, and being appointed his full-time replacement in July.
“It’s special. That’s why you want to play footy and work hard – to have moments like this,” Young said of the performance.
“I’m just really happy for these guys because they’re the ones putting the effort in.
“The last eight weeks we’ve been in positions to win games in the last 20 minutes, but haven’t been quite good enough. Beating a top four team in Cronulla last week gave the boys lots of confidence and it’s slowly building.
The Tigers were promising in patches during the loss, completing at 90 per cent and occasionally going on a run thanks to breakthrough debutant Solomane Saukuru, who scored a double.
The win takes the Dragons to within four points of both the 15th-placed Gold Coast Titans and 16th-placed Brisbane Broncos, with three regular season fixtures remaining.
However, Young was not fazed at the prospect of climbing off the bottom of the ladder.
“It’s not my focus. We’re not making the semis so in the end I just wanted to get the boys to buy into try and get better each and every week, which is what they’re doing. Where ever we land we land,” he said.
“The expectation is we finish the year off strong, we’ve made a lot of change since I’ve taken over and I can’t thank the players and the staff enough for buying into that change.
“We’re seeing it through and we’ve still got a lot of improvement in us. I thought we were the better team and we were in control of the game most of the night. But we were still fighting for the win at the back end so we still need to learn our lessons on Wednesday and move forward into the Dogs.”
Young declined to heap praise on his outside backs, Tyrell Sloan and Moses Suli, who both crossed for tries and had breakout individual performances – despite facing uncertain futures beyond this year, with Sloan headed for the Super League and Suli told he has permission to look elsewhere for 2027.