St George Illawarra enters round four with no wins, and the finger-pointing has already begun. Three rounds into the 2026 season, the Dragons have endured losses to Canterbury in Las Vegas, Melbourne at home, and Parramatta at Bankwest. The pattern tells a story of potential squandered in crucial moments.
The Dragons matched motors with Canterbury for eighty minutes before Stephen Crichton stepped up in golden point, suggesting the new-look side has the capacity to compete with the competition's better teams. Against Melbourne, they gave a great account of themselves for sixty minutes before fullback Sua Faalogo ripped the game away with three tries in twelve minutes, another narrow defeat that could have gone either way.
Yet the ladder shows 0-2 but there have been plenty of positives for Dragons coach Shane Flanagan to take into matches against the Eels, Titans, Cowboys and Sea Eagles in the next month. Those positives, however, sit uneasily against a troubling pattern: the club is yet to win in 2026, and the gaps between good performance and defeat are becoming indefensible.
The halves question
The focus of much of the commentary centres on the halves pairing of Daniel Atkinson in the number seven jersey with Kyle Flanagan as five-eighth. Atkinson is relatively inexperienced with just 36 NRL games for Melbourne and Cronulla-Sutherland, having played 16 games in 2025 with fifteen off the bench.
Atkinson acknowledges the challenge ahead. The playmaker said his partnership with Flanagan was developing well but stressed it and the Dragons were a work in progress, saying "Everything's gonna take time, we're a new halves combination, we're a new team, we got new people in different positions, you're only gonna get better by playing games".
Yet the halfback also identified a more immediate problem. Atkinson said "We thought we played a really good 60 minutes of footy on the weekend and we showed to other people, but more importantly, we showed to ourselves what we can do. But there are moments there where we're given errors, and discipline, and we can't have those, we've gotta limit them, and we've gotta be a full 80-minute team".
Discipline and execution for a full match, not just passages of play, are the deficits that separate the Dragons from wins. That is not a problem unique to the halves, but when a team finishes 15th and retools its midfield, every error becomes magnified under scrutiny.
A narrow margin between promise and failure
The Dragons lost six games by less than six points in 2026, including three by one. That statistic cuts both ways: it suggests close margins and competitive football, but it also suggests a lack of composure or decision-making when games hang in the balance. The 2026 season opened with those narrow losses, suggesting that mentality issue persists.
The Dragons are widely tipped to again struggle in 2026 after finishing 15th in 2025, although that doesn't tell the whole picture with the Red V having an enormous injury toll and losing ten games by less than points. The injuries are less of a factor now that squad is at near full strength, which makes the 0-3 start harder to rationalise.
Coach Shane Flanagan has attempted to address the attack's weakness. Flanagan acknowledged his side's attack must improve and told News Corp he will encourage his playing group to take more risks on the field, saying "Taking more risks is something we will encourage this year. We score one more try per game and we're in the top eight".
The question for the Dragons now is whether the halves partnership can be the vehicle for that risk-taking, or whether fresh recruitment will eventually be required. Four more matches before Easter will answer that. Until then, Atkinson and Flanagan must find a way to turn 60 minutes of competence into 80 minutes of winning football.