St George Illawarra five-eighth Corey Norman has shouldered blame for the Dragons’ “disappointing” form slump, conceding the “clunky” spine must pick up their act.
After winning four of their opening five games, the Dragons have slumped to sixth position following three straight losses.
The latest came on Sunday in a subpar 16-8 loss to the Wests Tigers in Wollongong.
Norman described the performance against the Tigers as not acceptable, especially in attack, despite the Dragons losing star centre Zac Lomax with a suspected broken thumb after just 19 minutes.
“We had the players to do the job – it simply came down to ill-discipline with the ball,” Norman said.
“We also need to fix our attack up. As a spine we were clunky, but as a spine (we) will put our hand up and get to work this week.
“It’s disappointing.
“That one hurts – we kind of beat ourselves. We had the review, and it just wasn’t us and up to our standards.
“We just had no respect for the ball. In the second half we had a 38 per cent completion rate, and you aren’t going to win a game with that.
“We were terrible with the ball.”
St George Illawarra will get a chance to revive their season when they host the bottom-placed Canterbury Bulldogs on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Norman paid tribute to premiership-winning Dragons winger Brett Morris after he suffered a career-ending ACL knee injury over the weekend.
Morris was the last on-field survivor from the joint-venture club’s maiden premiership in 2010.
He played 170 games for the Dragons between 2006 and 2014, scoring 114 tries.
Norman believes Morris will be remembered as a rugby league legend.
“It’s devastating – he is one of the best wingers the game has ever seen,” he said.
“Is a very tough ask to come up back from an injury like that, but no doubt that he has got a lot of support through family, friends and throughout the NRL community.
“I just wish him all the best.”