St George Illawarra Dragons head coach Shane Flanagan has revealed changes to his spine are unlikely despite the Red V squandering their second 12-point lead of the season.
The Round 4 win over the Melbourne Storm was something of a distant memory on Saturday afternoon as the joint-venture ran out to a 20 points to 8 lead, only to drop the game to the Parramatta Eels in a golden point thriller in front of a big crowd at Parramatta.
The performance handed Parramatta their first win of the season, and sends the Dragons back to the drawing board, with Flanagan's side unable to find the goal line defence that got them out of trouble time and time again seven days prior against Melbourne.
The Dragons again made more errors than their opposition with 12, completing at just 73 per cent throughout the contest.
Flanagan, asked whether he was considering changes, said putting out a different inexperienced spine wouldn't help the club's cause.
"I don't think it was a big step back. We didn't move forward, I know that much. There was a lot of effort there, but we just didn't execute properly at really important times," Flanagan said during his post-match press conference.
"There were a couple of decisions there that I thought were tough, and we didn't handle what came after it very well.
"We led by 12, same thing as we did against South Sydney. We led by 12 and couldn't finish it, couldn't nail it.
"We have to learn quickly.
"I can throw out new spines and all that sort of stuff, but it's an inexperienced spine so we aren't going to toss that out there.
"We just didn't get it done."
Club co-captain Damien Cook revealed he and his teammates simply must be smarter.
"We just have to be better, smarter with the way we play. We had a 12-point lead again like we did against Souths a couple of weeks ago, but we just have to be better at playing our footy and sticking to it," the veteran dummy half said.
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Flanagan defended his spine, saying they weren't the sole contributors to the loss.
"When you lose footy games, you're looking for answers within your team, but I don't think they [the spine] were the sole contributors today, they tried hard. We didn't get it done and I have to look at why we didn't get it done when we led by 12 points and we will deal with that during the week," the coach said.
He instead pin pointed a moment that left Dragons fans scratching their heads, with Christian Tuipulotu unable to secure a kick leading to a Parramatta try.
"We defended our tryline pretty well and then they got a six again, then we defended that set, they kicked into a corner. We needed to execute that catch. Would have been a seven tackle set for us. Just little things like that are just killing us, but they get a try from that. I don't think it was that hard of a catch to execute, but just little things like that can cost you a footy game," he said.
Lachlan Ilias and Kyle Flanagan have come under plenty of pressure, and that won't be going anywhere after Ilias put a kick out on the full during golden point leading to Zac Lomax being in the spot to kick the match-winning field goal.
Despite that, the Dragons have few options to run out a new-look halves combination, with Lykhan King-Togia - who replaced Flanagan at five-eighth in the final games of 2025 when the younger of the father-son combination was suspended - potentially the only realistic option.
The loss means the Dragons slump to a one and three start to the season, with the side heading back home next Friday evening to host the Gold Coast Titans.
