Dragons captain Ben Hunt has a “big concern” over the team’s inconsistency following a 38-10 loss to the Sharks at WIN Stadium.
The Dragons fought to keep themselves in the match for 56 minutes, but then four tries in 20 minutes saw the Sharks run away with a statement win that has pushed them up to third on the ladder.
St George Illawarra now need to win their remaining two games to stay in the eight.
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The result came a week after the Dragons stunned the Titans 32-16 at the same ground — and that had Hunt asking the question that’s likely on the minds of many fans.
“The big concern for me is why can’t we do what we did last week consistently? One week on, one week off,” he said in the post-game press conference.
“We need to win to our ourselves into the finals so we need to sort it out.”
Coach Shane Flanagan conceded the Sharks “had more intent” and summed up his team’s performance as “disappointing,” while highlighting all the areas that cost them.
“We gave them possession, field position and it cooked us — we were just too tired in the end. They played well, they played to their strengths but it was what we did to ourselves,” he said.
“We just cooked ourselves with penalties and errors in yardage in the first half.
“Errors, penalties, couldn’t get out of our own end, turned the ball over, cheap shots, lazy high penalties, off-side — you name it, we gave it away in the first half and that was the game.”
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The Dragons face the Eels next week and Hunt is adamant there will be no complacency going into that one despite where the opposition sit on the ladder.
“We’ve got to play finals so me it’s pretty simple, we need to lift,” he said.
“We haven’t played finals for a number of years, if you can’t get up and give your best effort against a team that’s below you to try and make the finals then what are we doing?”
They’ll finish off the regular season with a tough clash with the Raiders, who are still in the hunt for finals too.
And the message is simple from Flanagan.
“We’ve just got to win,” he said.
“We’ve shown we can beat good sides. We were off tonight, there’s no excuse, I’m the first one to put my hand up to say we weren’t good enough tonight but we need to battle on.
“There’s two rounds to go so we just need to make sure we win those two games.
“I’ve got a team that can play semi-final football, but we’ve got to go and prove it.”
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