Shane Flanagan went out doing what St George fans love… getting 11 in a row.

60 years after the old St George won 11 premierships in a row, Shane Flanagan has been given the arse at St George-Illawarra after getting the Dragons to 11 in a row, the obvious problem being 11 defeats in a row, which is longer than any losing streak the old Red V had in their 78 seasons (8 in a row), and matches the Illawarra Steelers’ longest losing streak in 1988, which was Terry Fearnley’s only season in Wollongong.

Amazing… 2 head coaches sacked before May – Can’t remember a season like this.

And the carnage didn’t end there, as Dean Young got the gig and immediately sacked Michael Ennis as attacking coach, forcing Ennis the Menace to focus on torturing the English language on Fox League, Kyle Flanagan got dropped the second his father couldn’t display some old-fashioned nepotism…

Yet another chapter of failure for a club who have been nothing short of awful since the 2010 premiership, to the point that the merged Dragons have more head coaches than they’ve played finals since 2010.

4 finals in total (2 in 2011 and 2 in 2018), and in that time they’ve been coached by Wayne Bennett, Steve Price, Paul McGregor, Anthony Griffin, Shane Flanagan, with interim stints from Dean Young (twice) and Ryan Carr.

So from the Flanagan Failure, the Dragons return to the Young Years… hopefully it’s as good as the last Dragon that had Young Years:

Now, on to the ANZAC Day slate:

– The Wests Tigers host the Canberra Raiders at Leichhardt, the first game at Leichhardt since Round 2 as the Tigers get a third consecutive game at their various homes, and I would note the Tigers haven’t defeated the Raiders at Leichhardt since 2010, and it’s also the Raiders’ first game at Leichhardt since the end of 2022 when they won 56-10 to confirm the Tigers for the wooden spoon… they only won 2 more wooden spoons after that.

– The 6pm ANZAC Eve game sees North Queensland host the Cronulla Sharks in Townsville, as the Sharks come off the bye and go from Perth all the way to Townsville off a fortnight break and the Cowboys get a few players back (Murray Taulagi, Reed Mahoney and Jeremiah Nanai) that didn’t play in the arse kicking that Manly dished out on them last Thursday, and an interesting stat is that the Sharks have won 5 out of the 6 games against the Cowboys at the Queensland Country Bank Stadium… they even won the last game at the old Willows 42-16.

– For the second year running the Brisbane Broncos and Canterbury meet at Suncorp on ANZAC Eve, once again in national primetime, and this time last year the Broncos were an inconsistent team that upended the unbeaten Canterbury and set in a rot that the Berries never really recovered from, and now the Broncos as defending premiers find ways to win but have an injury list to rival a Western Front casualty list, while the Bulldogs are a wildly inconsistent team, as one week they become the only team to defeat Penrith, and the next week they get smacked by a Parramatta team that had 50 points put on them by the damn Titans.

– The annual ANZAC Day Game sees Dean Young return to the hot seat as St George-Illawarra host the Sydney Roosters at Allianz at 4pm, and as an odd TV fact this is the only game in 2026 broadcast by Channel 9 on a Saturday outside of the finals… in fact the last time the ANZAC Game was actually played on a Saturday (Given 2020 was the pandemic year) was 2015, the year of the epic hailstorm that suspended the game at the old SFS, the first time an NRL game had been suspended due to weather since 2009:

There’s only one player left from that game that will be playing on Saturday – Daniel Tupou.

– Another edition of the New Zealand ANZAC Day game as the New Zealand Warriors host the Dolphins in the fabled CAKE TIN of Wellington (Hnry Stadium) at the rare 6pm AEST Saturday timeslot (Albeit 8pm in New Zealand), the first time the Warriors have played in Windy Wellington since Round 1 of 2023, and you know the Warriors are just about the most popular sporting club in New Zealand when they SELL OUT a game that isn’t even in their own city (34,000+ crowd), and it’s also a pretty brutal travel schedule for the Dolphins… they go from the tropics of Darwin all the way to Wellington in 8 days!

– The Saturday night ANZAC Game has the Melbourne Storm once again hosting the South Sydney Rabbitohs, and the subsiding Storm are going for a club record 6 DEFEATS IN A ROW, last achieved in 2002 (A streak that ended against Souths in Melbourne), while Souths’ record in Melbourne is so horrific that it got its own ABC Sport article on Wednesday…

27 YEARS, 20 GAMES WITHOUT A WIN.

It’s their best chance yet to end that drought, so they probably won’t…. also more importantly, congratulations to the all-time leading tryscorer Alex Johnston who plays his 250th game, and with 217 tries through his first 249 games, his 0.87 tries per game average is comfortably the best of all current players, and I do believe there’s only 1 player that scored 100+ First Grade tries while averaging a try per game… Harry Horder from South Sydney, who held the all-time record prior to Ken Irvine.

– The first Sunday afternoon game has Newcastle hosting Penrith in the Hunter as 8th plays 1st, as the Knights faded out badly against the Roosters to concede 5 tries in the last 25 minutes after leading 24-12, and the Panthers went from having the Dolphins on toast in Darwin (18-0 at half time), to falling behind 18-22, then scoring a try minutes from full-time, and Nathan Cleary did the rest in Golden Point… another fun fact about this game is that it’s Dominic Young’s 100th NRL game, and he’s got a pretty solid strike rate of 82 tries in his first 99 games.

– And the Channel 9 Sunday game has Manly hosting old rivals Parramatta as the Sea Eagles play their first game at Brookvale since they sacked Anthony Seibold, which also makes this Kieran Foran’s first home game as coach, and there’s a funny thought for Parramatta that after last weekend’s win against Canterbury, there are now 2 teams ranked below the Eels that have put 50 points on them this season… the Storm and the Titans.

And also, because this year is Manly and Parramatta’s 80th anniversary seasons, here’s a collection of those Tooheys ads from 1984…. How do you feel, like a Tooheys.

Quite a choice of rhyming words – Here we are again, Manly and Parra, Parra’s well ahead but the gap starts to narra….

Anyway, here’s the Round 8 Tips:

Round 7 Tips: 4/8

Round 7 Progress Score = 32/56 (57.1%)

And to warm you up for ANZAC Day, here’s a collection of classic tries from April 25th, because this video will be more entertaining than Saturday afternoon: