Griffinbore
The Dragons have been sleepwalking for 13 years now.
If you’ll allow me to indulge my inner Harry Potter nerd for a moment, it is said that Gryffindor is where the brave at heart dwell, exhibiting great daring and nerve.
You’d be forgiven, then, after watching the St George Illawarra Dragons mope around the field, that under coach Anthony Griffin and following years of haphazard recruitment, for thinking the Dragons give off a more solid Hufflepuff vibe (no disrespect to my badgers out there).
After all, good Hufflepuff, they took the rest.
Speaking of the rest, after a cursory glance at the signings the Dragons have made in the last few years, there’s a real “thrift shop” energy about it all, more than happy to sweep up the bargains and the discards from the other teams in the competition.
Making a splash signing is hard, sure, and pretty uncommon. You don’t just sign Origin incumbents every other week in a grand plan of super team assembly. But the Dragons over the last few years have been a medley of grizzled journeymen, rookie longshots and last chance saloons.
Take a look at the list of players to join the Dragons since 2020 from other clubs and play in first grade:
Billy Brittain, Tyrell Fuimaono, Issac Luke, Brayden Wiliame, Kaide Ellis, Daniel Alvaro, Jack Bird, Poasa Faamausili, Andrew McCullough, Josh McGuire, Billy Burns, Jamayne Taunoa-Brown, Freddy Lussick, Jack Gosiewski, Moses Mbye, Francis Molo, Aaron Woods, Moses Suli, Jaydn Su’a, George Burgess, Tautau Moga, Jacob Liddle, Ben Murdoch-Masila, Zane Musgrove
Some real bastions of the game there.
Of all those signings in the last 3-4 seasons, how many of them would you consider a genuine success? Jaydn Su’a? Francis Molo? Moses Suli and Jack Bird have both done well despite being panned at the time. Hell, Ben Murdoch-Masila has surprised me this season with his form. I’m really scratching around here, it’s genuinely grim.
But, in all honesty, considering both the ladder position of the Dragons the last few years and the amount of roster turnover they’ve had, it’s been something of a wasted era at the Dragons.
Since the Dragons won the premiership in 2010, they’ve made the finals a whopping three times, and none since 2018. Far too often the team has found themselves in no mans land both in terms of style of play and recruitment.
To properly analyse just how stuck in the mud the Dragons have become, though, we must look at Anthony Griffin, his history, and the past of the joint venture.
Anthony Griffin was Penrith coach for the better part of three years, from 2016-18. During that time, Penrith qualified for the finals every year, with a talented young roster. There was a lot of positive change in Griffin’s era at the foot of the mountains, including handing Nathan Cleary a debut in 2016 and never looking back, ushering in a new generation including Dylan Edwards and James Fisher-Harris, and reforming the club from perennial cellar dwellers to genuine consistent top eight threats.
Griffin’s Penrith teams were chaotic, entertaining and swashbuckling, a direct contrast to the personality of a coach maybe best described as “monotonous”. Penrith became known for going on late season runs and rounding into form at the right time.
But everyone also knew that Penrith were capped under Griffin. The swathe of talent at his disposal was only able to produce two second round exits under his tenure (plus a third in 2018, after his sacking late in the season).
Despite the relative success Penrith enjoyed during “Hook’s” era, the team was still somewhat of an asylum being run by the inmates. According to a report in the SMH (which you can read here) which details tensions between Griffin and then-Penrith assistant Cameron Ciraldo, Hook’s dictatorial style wore thin, a lack of delegation out of place in a staff that wanted more collaboration and input.
To pull one excerpt from the piece…
The members of the coaching staff, who at the time were keeping their concerns to themselves, had concluded that year one of Griffin’s reign was going to be all about getting the players fit and disciplined in preparation for the evolution of the style of football they would play in year two…
But the evolution never happened. The private concerns over Griffin’s narrow focus and repetitious program became frustrations and the staff began to believe the “run hard, tackle hard, no mistakes” mentality was stifling the talent coming through the system.
Before Griffin arrived at Penrith, the club would provide players with detailed tip sheets each week: “Left-hand carry, right-foot step.”
The lack of detail in Griffin’s first tip sheet stunned the staff at Penrith, who did not think it was up to the standard they had been used to.
“It was very simple,” a former player said. “There wasn’t much to it.”
Ciraldo, who prides his coaching on attention to detail, struggled to align himself with Griffin’s ideologies and the cracks soon began to appear.
This all came to a head late in 2018, with the team in the midst of yet another charge to the finals. Phil Gould, sensing stagnation in the side, made the call to relieve Griffin despite the club being firmly entrenched in the top eight.
The reason? Griffin was too “old school”.
What followed was some juvenile back and forth sniping in the media between Griffin and Gould but the results speak for themselves. Refreshed and with Ivan Cleary back in tow, we know how Penrith’s next few years went.
Meanwhile, the Dragons were in the midst of their own identity crisis. With Paul McGregor in charge, the Dragons were one of the more volatile teams in the league, parading to the finals in 2018, thumping Brisbane by 30 in Week 1 before bowing out to South Sydney.
Following that, two years of abject misery, including extending Mary’s contract four games into a season that would ultimately see them land 15th, followed by another year of turmoil that would cost McGregor his job.
After the tainted era of McGregor was over, many Dragons fans were hoping for a fresh light to enter the club, someone with new ideas and plans to lift a team mired in depression and move them into the 21st century.
I’m not privy to Dragons discussions (and frankly I don’t want to be), but I can’t imagine Griffin was the top of the list of innovative thought leaders Dragons fans were clamouring for.
A man fired by Phil Gould of all people for being too out of touch? That’s a sharp blow to any ego.
The Dragons situation when Griffin took over wasn’t too dissimilar to Penrith a few years ago. A talented crop of juniors and young players to be nursed and developed into first grade like Zac Lomax, Blake Lawrie, Mikaele Ravalawa, Tyrell Sloan and Junior Amone led by some experienced veterans like Ben Hunt, the blueprint for a similar ascent up the ladder was conceivably there.
Ask yourself this. The mark of a good coach is that players improve under them. Since Hook took over, how many players can you say have genuinely taken a step forward? Blake Lawrie might be the start and end of said list.
That framework has failed to develop, however, and following yet another morose performance over the weekend at the hands of the severely depleted Bulldogs led, ironically, by Griffin’s former assistant-slash-combatant at Penrith in Cameron Ciraldo, the drums have begun beating again.
Not that the drums ever truly stop beating along the beaches of Wollongong or the streets of Kogarah. Dragons fans have been burned more times than a piece of steak in a Gordon Ramsay cooking show, but they’re not idiot sandwiches.
Whether it was Tyrell Sloan getting put in the washing machine twice by Jake Averillo or the corpse of Josh Reynolds outplaying both Dragons halves on his own, the Dragons have disrespected their fans one week too far, and if the team rips on their fans like 13 or 14 more times they’re outta there.
After a runaway victory against the Dolphins, the Dragons have lost four straight, and not exactly to a murderer’s row of opponents either in the chaotic Titans, Jekyll and Hyde Raiders, new look Roosters and aforementioned Dogs, looking more dishevelled and disdainful in every single encounter. Add in a Magic Round encounter with the Tigers, buoyant after knocking off the Panthers in Bathurst, and it’s not hard to see a freefall (as far as you can fall from 15th on the ladder) down into the depths.
Whether it’s signing any ageing ex-Bronco that moves or coaching yet another disasterclass against a bottom eight pretender, the Dragons have become a basket case that Green Day would be proud of.
Dragons fans are neurotic to the bone.
The coach gives them the creeps.
Are they paranoid? Or are they just stoned?
Maybe they’re in Hogwarts after all.
Hufflepuff will take them.