St George Illawarra slammed over ‘soft’ defence against Newcastle Knights

The St George Illawarra Dragons horror season is almost over but a poor performance against Newcastle has seen more barbs directed the team’s way.

Zac Lomax had a huge game despite the big loss.

The Newcastle Knights have thrashed the St George Illawarra Dragons 42-18 in Newcastle but the commentators haven‘t held back over the lacklustre Dragons.

The Knights were on song from the kick-off, scoring five first half tries to one from the Dragons but less than the dominant performance was the ease of some of the tries.

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The Knights had it all their own way from when Kalyn Ponga opened the scoring in the third minute, before Gehamat Shibasaki showed great strength and awareness to keep his ball playing arm off the ground before reaching out to score after catching a bomb.

The other three tries were scored from close range with the Dragons defence barely putting up a fight, being criticised for not moving off their line.

The pick of the soft tries was when Daniel Saifiti scored, hitting the defence and then just reached over to score.

“That was, dare I saw, quite soft,” Andrew Johns said.

Of the first half, Paul Gallen called their defence “soft at best”.

Even Dragons fan and celebrity chef Matt Moran, who was the guest on Sunday Night with Matty Johns, took a shot.

“What a day to come in for the Dragons, absolutely appalling,” he said.

The Dragons were dejected during the result.

At halftime, Braith Anasta said “there were highlights for some, and lowlights for others” as the Knights ran out with a 30-6 lead at the break.

Ben Ikin added: “The simple truth of this match is that you can only play what‘s in front of you. The Dragons have been poor, defensively so far off the mark, it’s hard to get a sense of where the Knights are in this game, what they’re going to learn from this match.”

While the Dragons made more of a game of it in the second half, it was never going to be enough.

Coach Dean Young said he didn‘t see it coming and said “They’re probably lacking a bit of belief and don’t believe they can win at the moment”.

“We wouldn‘t have beaten Dapto today, that was under-eights stuff,” he added.

He added that after losing for two seasons it was tough to bounce back.

The Knights were good but how good is hard to know.

After a long season having been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons that saw the pressure mount and eventually topple long-term coach Paul McGregor, Young had no answers to the question of whether the side were already looking to holidays with one game left in the season.

With little hope left as the club prepares for life under new coach Anthony Griffin, it appears the new coach will have plenty of work to do with the Dragons‘ defence.

As for the Knights, it looks like a positive result with the side moving up to sixth on the ladder in a positive result after going win-loss for the last five weeks.

“We scored points but I‘m not sure how the coach will go,” Knights star Kalyn Ponga said on Fox League. ”We let 18 in – I think we could probably be a bit more gritty at the end there.”