St George Illawarra Dragons bid to overhaul their attack for the 2022 NRL season

It’s a new-look St George Illawarra Dragons outfit and they are preparing to blow their rivals off the park next season in a big move away from the norm.

Jayden Sullivan. Picture NRL Images

This is the start of St George Illawarra’s plan of attack for 2022.

The Dragons will use a two-day camp on NSW’s south coast, starting Monday, to focus purely on attack — and nothing else.

This will be ‘ball in hand’ for the entire journey.

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With a new spine for 2022, St George Illawarra players will run through attacking structures, principles and processes over four sessions at Michael Cronin Oval, Gerringong.

St George Illawarra’s impressive Feagai twins, Mat and Max. Picture: Dragons Digital

Ironically, Cronin was one of the finest attacking players of his generation in an electric Parramatta backline during the early to mid-1980s.

“The focus for these couple of days will purely be about building our attacking principles, and things related to everything attack,” said Dragons general manager of football, Ben Haran.

“It will be everything — ball in hand, handling stuff, attacking sets, back of the field, front of the field, all those attacking principles. It will allow us to put some time into it (the attack).

“A lot of the other sessions throughout a week are defensive oriented. So to have a couple of intense days around the attacking side of the game is good for the combinations we are looking to build.

“We will have a bit of a different spine going into next season. We will do four sessions on the field which will allow the boys to spend some time together.”

Jayden Sullivan is one of the Dragons’ exciting prospects. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

St George Illawarra scored 474 points last season, an average of 19.7 points a game.

There were only five other teams who scored less points through 2021. Melbourne posted 815 points — 341 more than the Dragons.

St George Illawarra will offer up new spine next season with the options being:

Fullback: Cody Ramsay, Tyrell Sloan

Five-eighth: Junior Amone, Jayden Sullivan

Halfback: Ben Hunt

Hooker: Andrew McCullough, Moses Mbye

South Sydney recruits Jaydn Su’A and Tautau Moga will train with St George Illawarra for the first time during the south coast camp.

“This will be the first opportunity we’ve had to get the whole squad together,” Haran said.

“Jaydn Su’A and Tautau Moga will start on Monday and we had Moses Suli and Jack Gosiewski start last Thursday.

“We are going to spread ourselves around a bit on the Monday night dinner. Instead of all of us having dinner at the one spot, we will break into four or five groups and go to different places for a meal.

“One group is going to ‘Crow’s’ (Cronin) pub in Gerringong. The other groups will be in and around Kiama.

“We have invited a few local schools to come along and watch training. We want to be out in the community down there, which is obviously part of our region.”

After a promising start last season, St George Illawarra fell away to run 11th, winning just eight of 24 games. The south coast is part of the club’s junior development catchment area.

Originally published as St George Illawarra Dragons bid to overhaul their attack for the 2022 NRL season