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There must have been a deep sigh of relief in the sheds for St George Illawarra on Saturday afternoon.
Meeting the Titans at Cbus, the Dragons hadn’t scored a single point in over 160 minutes of football.
While rumours had been rumbling as to how Paul McGregor would deal with the fallout from a third loss, nobody seemed to know quite what would happen if the Red V failed to win a single game north of the border.
It has to be said, of course, that St George Illawarra have had an unlucky draw this year.
While every team has their cross to bear, there’s something pretty intimidating about playing the 2015 finalists back-to-back at their own home stadia, especially on the heels of a grand final rematch that reminded everyone just how likely it was that these two behemoths would be battling it out for the trophy again in 2016.
While taking on the Titans was – comparatively – a more relaxed prospect, the possibility of a hat-trick of Queensland losses was almost unbearable to contemplate, especially for a team housing one of the main contenders for the New South Wales No.1 jersey.
For some teams, losing is more shameful than others. Or maybe some teams wear their shame more vividly than others. Regardless, St George Illawarra have the kind of pride and heritage that makes underperformance particularly confronting.
What made the game so volatile was that the Titans have become more of a desperate outfit over the last couple of weeks as well.
At the start of the year they were the desperate outfit par excellence. Not only were they facing the possibility of losing their NRL status, but – even worse – they had to consider that their beloved catchment area and home stadium might be rebranded to accommodate a New South Wales team.
More than anything else, the prospect of the Gold Coast Titans becoming the Gold Coast Bears seems to have galvanised the team, turning them into serious contenders over the first couple of weeks. Sure, the return of Greg Bird and arrival of Dave Shillington had a lot to do with it, but it was the precarity of the club as a whole that seemed to turn Cbus into one of the most impenetrable fortresses in the game over the first few weeks of 2016.
Over the last couple of weeks, however, the Titans’ star has started to fade again. With losses to the Sharks at Southern Cross and the Broncos at Cbus, the Titans had something to prove, and given that the Dragons’ form over the last fortnight was even worse, the standoff seemed like a good place to prove it.
That Gold Coast anxiety has been enhanced by David Mead’s positional switches between fullback and wing. While both Mead and William Zillman are more than capable of playing at the back, the Titans can’t seem to decide where to put them. Although it’s a bit of an old-fashioned view, a stable fullback means a stable team. With that level of uncertainty and inconsistency at the back, it’s hard for a team to really unify, and the contrast between Mead’s move to the wings and Josh Dugan’s return to fullback couldn’t have been more emphatic.
Indeed, like virtually every match this season, Dugan made yet another case for the NSW custodian’s role. While I prefer James Tedesco – and possibly even Lachlan Coote – I have to credit Dugan’s dexterity and judgment on the field, especially in the opening of the second half. Although that’s always an important moment in the game, it’s been especially important in 2016, and the Dragons used it as an example of just how well they can play defensive football when they’re gelling as a team.
Dugan was critical to that effort, bringing down David Mead with an ankle tap at the end of an 80-metre dash, and it was only a matter of time before three defenders stopped Nene McDonald scoring a try off a cross-field kick from Tyrone Roberts. Roberts himself managed to smash through in the 67th minute to drop the Steeden under the posts without a Dragon in sight, and while he may have also scored a cheeky penalty at the 80th minute, it was all over by that stage for the sorry Titans.
However, it was Gareth Widdop who saved the day, putting in his most decisive performance this season, and more than making up for the continued absence of Benji Marshall. The Englishman scored and converted the first try of the game, then converted tries from Kalifa Fafai Loa and Jack de Belin, then slotted a field goal in the last three minutes.
It’s always powerful when a single player bookends a match like that, but this was the decisive gesture that the Red V absolutely needed from their captain if they were going to stay afloat. While it was a fairly modest game overall, Widdop’s presence and panache was one of the best instances of captaincy this season, as he brought something of the older Melbourne attitude to bear on the Cbus crowd.
If there was a low point for Widdop, it was his high shot on Ashley Taylor in the dying moments of the game that saw the rising Gold Coast half stretchered off with what appeared to be a fairly nasty case of concussion. It was as if Widdop had so much desperation-fuelled adrenaline that he didn’t know when to stop. Still, it added a brutal edge to the game, especially since Bird wasn’t around to absorb the brutality as he normally does so well.
Ryan James also had a brainsnap with a crusher tackle on the first half, while Daniel Mortimer was injured and Leivaha Palu battled on through a rib injury. It was that kind of night – two desperate teams grinding it out to the last.
For the Dragons the battle is far from over. While the Chooks may have held their own over the Bunnies last week, they’re still smarting from an underwhelming season and will be looking to make easy fodder of St George Illawarra.
On the other hand, the Titans are going to be as desperate to regain their pride as the Bulldogs after their near loss to the Warriors. The showdown at ANZ Stadium is going to be one of the best games this season.
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