Dolphins head coach Kristian Woolf has revealed Francis Molo will not be rushed straight into his struggling team for next week.
The Dolphins locked in a zero and four start to the 2025 NRL season with a loss to the Brisbane Broncos on Friday evening.
The Queensland derby followed earlier losses to the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Newcastle Kights and Wests Tigers, with life after Wayne Bennett getting off to a shaky start for the club.
The club have seemingly struggled through the middle third of the field and welcomed released St George Illawarra Dragons prop Francis Molo to the club during the week.
Despite their plight, Woolf said he wouldn't be rushing the former Queensland State of Origin representative into his forward pack if he wasn't ready.
"In terms of Frank, he hasn't trained as a team, he has done his own training and looks really good and really fit, but he hasn't done anything with a team for eight or nine weeks," Woolf said of his new recruit during his post-match press conference.
"We need to make sure we protect him a little bit and get some training and contact into him. I don't think it would be fair on him or fair on anyone to throw him in there straight away.
"How long that takes, I'm not sure. We need to get him into a bit of training and a bit of contact to see how he looks."
The Dolphins face an almost must-win game against the Gold Coast Titans next weekend away from home, but captain Tom Gilbert said he has been proud of the team's effort, and said they aren't far away from a win.
"It's mixed emotions obviously," Gilbert said.
"Winning solves a lot of problems, but I think leaving the field I'm super proud of our effort.
"Attention to detail is probably poor, but the way we have been preparing the last couple of weeks, our start to the week hasn't been a lack of effort of physicality that's for sure, it's a lack of attention to detail.
"It's hard to walk off the field like that, because you put in the effort during the week, we put on the effort on the field as you can see, and we are falling short. I think we are doing it to ourselves, but I'm super proud of our team at the moment.
"The mixed emotions means we are getting closer, but we are also making the same mistakes again and again. We have to address that at training, and we will this week in our prep
"We are close, but we need to fix a few things."
The clash against the Titans, another local derby, poses as one with extra intrigue given the Gold Coast have managed two wins on the bounce, their new-look spine starting to make things happen.
After a horror loss to start the year against the Canterbury Bulldogs at Belmore, the Titans have had confidence restoring wins over the Newcastle Knights and Sydney Roosters over the last fortnight, giving the club a two and one start to go with their Round 1 bye.
Following the game against the Titans, things get tougher for the Redcliffe-based outfit, with matches against the Penrith Panthers and Melbourne Storm - albeit both at home - to follow, before they travel to Canberra to play the Raiders.
