NRL Odds: Veterans In To Fire Dragons
December 23rd, 2014 by TJ DilferIf you care to have a look over the NRL odds for the 2015 season, you’ll see that the Dragons are by no means the bookies’ favourites to reach the finals, let alone claim the premiership. But that doesn’t mean that the players and coaches at St George Illawarra – not to mention the fans – won’t have ambitions of making next season a successful one. And that means finding a berth in the finals, first and foremost.
To help make that a reality, head coach Paul McGregor has turned to a couple of the Dragons’ fiercest competitors – a couple of veterans who he will hope will put the fire back into the Dragons, and make them competitive right to the end of the 2015 campaign. Those two former Dragons, Ben Hornby and Dean Young, have both been involved with coaching the junior sides at St George Illawarra since the end of their playing careers, but this season marks their first opportunity to be involved full-time with the senior squad. Both men will be excited to be involved with the team once more, but they will know that they have a challenge on their hands if they’re going to see the Dragons at the top of the pile again. According to Hornby: ‘Mary [McGregor] knows he can trust us and he knows we have the club running through us. We have been here for a long time. We want to see the club do well. We’re young and keen to get involved and improve. All those things played a part. [Recent finishes] is not where we want to be sitting. This is not where we belong. We belong further up the table. We are working hard to get ourselves back up there. We’re doing everything in our power to make sure we get back up there.’
And part of that will be a lot of hard work on the Dragons’ defensive system – a perceived frailty over the course of last season will need to be corrected, and, according to Hornby, lots of work has been going in across the squad, so that whatever team is selected for the first game of the 2015 campaign, the new defensive system will be in place: ‘we’ve worked hard on it. We’ve come up with a system which we think will work. At the end of the day it’s about blokes making good decisions and getting themselves in good positions. Working hard, talking and communicating and putting ourselves in a good position to start with so we can keep ourselves where we want to be. We have not settled on a side. Everyone is getting a shot in every position.’
So all good noises coming out of the Dragons camp in the off season, but can we expect to see a reinvigorated side in the new season? Having a look at the NRL odds for 2015, the bookies think they’ve got a real mountain to climb to make it a winning season, but the finals might just be in the sights of a coaching staff with some new, ambitious additions…
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