The Sunday breakfast that sealed Flanagan’s fate at the Dragons

April 20, 2026 — 1:52pm

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It is never usually good news when the chairman of an NRL club invites the head coach around for breakfast on a Sunday morning.

That is precisely what happened over the weekend when Andrew Lancaster reached out to now former St George Illawarra coach Shane Flanagan.

The Dragons had just lost their seventh straight game to start the season – 30-12 to South Sydney on Saturday night – continuing a run of 11 straight defeats that stretches back to round 23 of last year.

As if Lancaster were not already feeling enough pain, he bumped into Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a passionate South Sydney fan, in one of the corporate boxes at Accor Stadium. Albanese politely reminded Lancaster of the score.

To be fair to Albanese, he also told Lancaster he would park his club allegiance and help officially launch the Dragons’ shiny new training facility at Wollongong, better known as the Bruce Gordon Centre, next month.

But, back to the brekkie in Sydney with Lancaster, Dragons chief executive Tim Watsford, Flanagan and his manager, Isaac Moses.

The easy thing for the Dragons to do was wait a week and part ways with Flanagan when they had the bye.

Why take the........

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