“Stay with us”.
That was Dean Young’s plea to the Dragons’ faithful after fans booed his side following their 30-12 loss to the Warriors, marking their 11th defeat of the season.
The Red V’s nightmare rolled on in Round 12, with the likes of Alofiana Khan-Pereira, Te Maire Martin and Dallin Watene Zelezniak running riot in Kogarah.
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But despite missing 35 tackles, completing at only 70 per cent and allowing five linebreaks — Young was certain that his side were “building”.
“Yeah I think so. The boys kept on fighting all the way to the end, and that’s what I expect,” he said.
“I know they’re in a tough spot and we appreciate all the fans turning up tonight, where we’re sitting on the ladder and to have so many of those fans turn up, pay their hard-earned and sit in the pouring rain.
“We appreciate it, we’ve got a fan day tomorrow and all the boys are going to be thanking everyone that turns up tomorrow.
“So stay with us, we’re building.”
As for his side’s main problem, Young broke it down into “two parts” before giving his full take on his side’s fourth loss under his mentorship, following the departure of Shane Flanagan.
“We started the game pretty good. We went six from six and started well, from that point I think we were at 69 per cent (completion) after that,”
“I was just saying to the lads downstairs, that’s going to make it really, really hard against the sides that are down the bottom of the competition.
“But it’s nearly mission impossible against the side that’s coming second. So we need to address that and then I thought we lost the physical battle.
“I thought the Warriors were really good at that. Their back five ran really hard and we lost the collisions and then we tried to slow down the ruck off the back of that.
“Then we cooked ourselves with six agains.”
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Skipper Damien Cook was then asked if his team’s consistent errors and inability to score points was down to a team lacking confidence.
However, the gun hooker believed his side were improving and the “pressure” is being caused by their own actions.
“I definitely think our attack on their try line can be a bit better, but that’s coming off the back of putting ourselves under scoreboard pressure and then looking at chase points,” he said.
“(There’s) a lot of work we have to do in (defence) so we didn’t get too many opportunities down there. So probably trying to force it a bit too much.
“It’s definitely a work on for us next week, but probably going off the last two weeks there’s a lot of good things, we just need to put them all together.”