For a while there you wondered if the beleaguered St George Illawarra Dragons should forgo bananas and ban pineapple on their burgers and pizzas. Queensland had not been kind to them, and it seemed that forgoing tropical fruit was the only way the Dragons could strike back: Take that, Queensland!
But in Saturday’s twilight game the sun set on their woes and, after consecutive away losses to Brisbane and North Queensland (by 36-0 and 26-0 respectively), Paul McGregor’s team managed to rack up 18 first-half points before holding off the Gold Coast Titans, 19-14. You wouldn’t say that the Dragons had emphatically fixed their attacking problems – like their baffling inclination to run one out and their predilection to drift sideways in attack – but for the club and its fans it was a welcome respite from a fortnight of being compared to vasectomy survivors.
The win, however, hasn’t removed the feeling that if the Dragons are to make the finals it will be by the skin of their teeth. But that’s okay, right? Making the finals seems to be the extent of the Dragons’ ambitions these days. In fact, aside from a few seasons – most notably those in the Wayne Bennett era of 2009-2011 – you wonder if that’s more or less been the case since the club was formed in late 1998.
It wasn’t meant to be this way. The joint-venture Dragons were touted to be a “super club” before the David Waite-coached team’s inaugural season. However, the 17-season history of St George Illawarra – never mind the past few weeks – draws attention to the chasm between hype (or at least wishful thinking) and reality. Supporters of Balmain and Western Suburbs who embraced the Wests Tigers will no doubt empathise.
But for an exhilarating debut season in 1999 (when the exciting, Mundine-and-Blacklock-inspired Dragons suffered a heartbreaking grand final loss to the Storm; one that gives Dragons supporters involuntary spasms to this day), two preliminary final appearances under Nathan Brown in 2005 and 2006, and two-and-a-half years of excellence under Wayne Bennett (which culminated in the 2010 premiership), the Dragons have looked anything but super. Indeed they’ve more often looked like a man who, upon hearing the cries of someone in distress, runs into an old school phone booth, unknots his tie and rips open his shirt to reveal … a sensible white singlet.
To be fair you could probably say the same of most other NRL teams who, in the past 15 years, have not had the rosters of Melbourne and Manly or the bank-rolled riches of Souths and Sydney Roosters. Or teams like Brisbane, who’ve had both. It’s a struggle out there. Just ask Newcastle.
Then again, the NRL’s less glamorous clubs, apart from the Wests Tigers, weren’t formed out of the bones of two others. Considering the great loss and sacrifice that preceded the formation of the joint venture, supporters of St George (the game’s most famous club!) and Illawarra (the game’s richest nursery of young players!) surely expected more than more of the same: mediocrity.
Recall St George legend John Raper putting on a brave face when, in late 1998, the merger was announced: “Let blokes like us … live in the past and relive the glories,” he said. “But remember, blokes like us hate running second, and this is the ideal way for us not to run second.”
Second? After the past four and bit seasons of joyless, creatively-bereft football, Dragons fans would give a kidney for second.
Considering the links the two clubs had prior to the Steelers joining the competition in 1982, the merger of St George and Illawarra was relatively harmonious. Some problems that existed then, however, have never gone away, such as having two home grounds 67km apart. Wollongong-based fans, in particular, must feel aggrieved that WIN Stadium hosts just four games a year. Then again, Jubilee gets just four, too, with the rest of the games spread between Homebush and Moore Park. None of this helps instill a sense of ownership or of home (and Football Federation Australia should bear it in mind if it’s thinking of a Southern Sydney A-League side splitting home games between Sutherland and Wollongong).
Coupled with this the Dragons have hardly been flush with cash, nor do they appear to benefit as much as many others from the kind of third party agreements that help secure the services of top players (and make a mockery of the salary cap). Accordingly, while the Dragons are usually linked to every big player who comes on to the market (Cooper Cronk is the latest) most often they only seem to land the players no-one else wants. Their current best, Josh Dugan, more or less fell from a suburban Canberra rooftop, Bacardi in hand, and into their laps.
The same can be said of coaches. The only elite coach the Dragons have reportedly gone hard for – the Storm’s Craig Bellamy – knocked them back in 2012. Yes, they secured Wayne Bennett – the best thing that happened to the club since its inception – but that only occurred after the Cowboys reneged on a handshake agreement to sign him. The Dragons pounced, and hindsight will show they should have signed him for the five years he wanted and not three.
Outside of Bennett, the Dragons have remained content to promote from within – former Steelers coach Andrew Farrar after Waite and, on either side of Bennett, rookies Nathan Brown and Steve Price. After the Dragons’ poor run under Price, it was a bold move for CEO Peter Doust and his board to go for another rookie in McGregor.
The Dragons, like St George before them, have always shown an admirable inclination to look after their own but if McGregor doesn’t meet expectations you have to ask when does admirable become blindly stubborn? Is this something the Dragons board and Doust – the longest serving CEO in the game – ask themselves? And if McGregor “fails” (bearing in mind the roster he has to work with) at what point does Doust and his board consider that they might be part of the problem?
In the meantime the pressure mounts on McGregor and his team to find the superhero within. Superman is out of the question and Batman might be too much of a stretch. For the foreseeable future, Robin may just have to do.
