Throughout the 2023 season, the Sta CDragons lurched from one catastrophe to another, and as the off-season progresses, many questions remain unsolved.
In addition to having numerous off-field problems and statements, the Red V had a season marked by the dismissal of a coach, another missed finals, and a captain’s request for a release.
It was a difficult season for the club’s supporters, and although Shane Flanagan’s hiring has given them hope for the future, the board, which is under intense pressure from a fan base that doesn’t tolerate failure, needs to reflect in order to make sure that the same mistakes aren’t made again.
A pre-season dismissal that happened in the middle of the season
This all started at the beginning of the 2022 season when the Dragons’ board decided to exercise an option that would have kept Anthony Griffin as the team’s manager through 2023, thus perpetuating past errors.
The Dragons extended Paul McGregor’s contract unusually early in a season when he wasn’t scoring runs and there were no teams vying for him.
That was an extremely bad move.
Thus, you could see the eye roll from the center of Kogarah on the Wollongong hill when the Dragons exercised Griffin’s option after one season that was well below average and without a ball being kicked in the second.
2022 was proof positive that it was, in fact, the wrong decision. 2023 began just as disastrously as it had ended. Despite Ben Hunt’s remarks about his own future if Griffin was awarded the punt, the team appeared to have given up and had no intention of playing for Griffin.
When Griffin was fired by the team in the middle of the season, the band-aid was ultimately removed, but this was a preseason decision that ought to have been made without worrying about a contract option.
In the end, the 2023 season was also ruined by a decision made at the beginning of 2022 by a board that was
unwilling to learn from its previous failures.
There is disagreement over how long the joint venture will need to heal from Griffin’s three-year stint, even with the roster adjustments Shane Flanagan has already been able to make for 2024.
With Liddle on, the Dragons found an advantage in both attack and defense; it wasn’t simply one end of the park. On Anzac Day, things reached a breaking point.
LINKED: Our assessment from April 27
And there were the problems with Zac Lomax and Moses Suli switching sides. This reached a breaking point when Griffin finally benched Lomax, only forC the interim coach, to call him back.
When both players were on the wrong side of the park, they regressed in nearly every statistical category.
In the end, both decisions were illogical and probably decided the Dragons’ destiny for 2023.
