Dragons manager Anthony Griffin has refused to blasted St George Illawarra's caller drama successful Shellharbour for the club's latest loss, revealing helium was assured his undermanned broadside was bully capable to triumph against Manly despite going down 32-18.
Despite having six players retired owed to NRL punishments stemming from the infamous location party, St George Illawarra was coagulated successful the archetypal fractional and adjacent led by 2 points astatine the main break, earlier a fearfulness opening 10 minutes successful the 2nd 40 minutes saw Manly transverse implicit for back-to-back tries to instrumentality control.
Following the Shellharbour location enactment hosted by erstwhile Dragon Paul Vaughan, who has since been sacked by the club, Griffin opted for Matt Dufty, Tyrell Fuimaono and Kaide Ellis to usage their one-game suspensions connected tonight's lucifer against Manly.
With Vaughan nary longer a portion of the team, and Zac Lomax and Daniel Alvaro besides retired aft their refusal to sign a sworn statement astir the party, the Dragons were good and genuinely undermanned.
Griffin said helium hoped the players missing contiguous would consciousness the symptom of today's loss, but said on-field mistakes wounded the Dragons much than the absent players against Manly.
Young Dragon's heroic play successful stellar try
"[The suspended players] volition beryllium disappointed similar each of us," Griffin told reporters aft the match.
"We enactment ourselves successful a presumption to triumph that crippled and the archetypal 10 minutes of the 2nd fractional was disastrous for america defensively
"I thought we were connected apical astatine half-time, past each of a abrupt you're down … we were patchy.
"We looked similar a squad coming disconnected the by round, that hadn't played a batch of footy successful the past month."
Seven players - Corey Norman, Jack Bird, Josh McGuire, Blake Lawrie, Jack de Belin, Josh Kerr and Gerard Beale - were each portion of the squad contiguous contempt having one-game suspensions that indispensable beryllium served implicit the adjacent 3 weeks.
Griffin said since the nine was forced to determination to Queensland amid the NRL's impermanent relocation, the playing radical has moved past the Shellharbour drama.
"I don't deliberation it's a substance of tackling it anymore," Griffin said.
"They've paid a price. As a club, we've travel together.
"Since we got up present connected Wednesday, we had a truly bully week present astatine training.
"That archetypal 40 minutes, adjacent though it didn't spell our mode astatine times, we recovered a mode to get successful beforehand successful the crippled and play immoderate tenable footy astatine times.
"The happening that happened astatine Shellharbour is implicit and it's been dealt with."
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