St George Illawarra continued to show glimpses of good football but were unable to put together a full 80-minute performance, ultimately falling 30-20 to the Parramatta Eels at CommBank Stadium.
The Red V looked set for an ambush on Eels turf after dominating early proceedings and setting up a 14-6 lead, but the period right before and after half-time proved costly and sent the club to its first 0-3 start to a season since 2020.
The Dragons let the Eels score 18 unanswered points between the 34th and 44th minutes and then couldn’t claw their way back.
The momentum shift came via a Ryan Couchman sin bin as the Dragons interchange forward was ruled to have collected J’maine Hopgood with a hip drop tackle in the 27th minute.
Match: Eels v Dragons
Round 3 -
home Team
Eels
9th Position
away Team
Dragons
16th Position
Venue: CommBank Stadium, Sydney
“We just beat ourselves, to be really honest,” Head Coach Shane Flanagan said.
“[We] fought hard, effort’s there, created enough opportunities but beat ourselves with errors… We should’ve executed a few things. We just couldn’t get it done. We made more line breaks. Every stat that’s there, we were in front but we didn’t win on the scoreboard and that’s all that matters.”
Tries to Tallyn Da Silva and Kitione Kautoga followed, with the latter coming right before the halftime break to give the home side an 18-14 lead at the interval.
Da Silva added another try right after halftime, burrowing over from dummy half to extend the lead out to 24-14.
Eel Charlie Guymer helped give Dragons fans hope when he was sin binned for tackling Jacob Liddle while clearly offside from a quick tap in the 55th minute, with Kyle Flanagan producing a deft left foot grubber for Moses Suli to score in the ensuing set.
But 24-20 was as close as the Dragons would get from that point on, missing several chances late in the game to pull closer only to see a dropped pass scooped up by the Eels who sent speedster Josh Addo-Carr on a 70-metre sprint to victory.
“We’ve just got to be smart,” Damien Cook said.
“We’ve got to be happy not trying to score every time. We’ve got to be more disciplined with just finishing down there and just being resilient and doing that set after set and building pressure… There was a lot of effort there, but it means nothing when you lose.”
Earlier, the Dragons opened the scoring with a fourth-minute penalty goal to Holmes after former Eel Clint Gutherson chased through a Daniel Atkinson bomb but was interfered with.
The lead belonged to the Eels at the 10-minute mark after the bunker ruled Jaydn Su’A held Parramatta pivot Jonah Pezet back as Kautoga threw an inside ball close to the line.
The officials awarded a penalty try and Mitchell Moses added the extras to move the home side into a 6-2 lead.
NRL Match Highlights: Round 3 vs. Eels
Rather than dwell on it, the Dragons went right back to work, and two minutes later, Luciano Leilua powered over under the posts from a Flanagan pass, and Holmes converted to be 8-6 in front.
The advantage moved to eight points when Atkinson hit a rampaging Su’A with a short ball on the right edge and Holmes kicked the conversion to take control at 14-6.
A golden chance to go further ahead was botched when Holmes burst free from inside his own half a minute later only to throw a forward pass on the inside as he drew the last line of defence.
NRL Press Conference: Round 3 vs. Eels
