valentine holmes said there was no excuse for his very poor game in St George Illawarra's 30-12 round-eight loss to South Sydney, after missing 10 tackles and watching Latrell Mitchell score four tries. It was the sort of outing that can turn a bad night into a coaching crisis, and it did just that two days later.
Holmes After South Sydney
“There's no excuses for the way I played (against Souths),” Holmes said after the loss. “It was very poor.” The centre was directly outplayed in the same match where Mitchell produced a career-best four tries, and the Dragons left with another heavy defeat on the board.
Two days after that result, Shane Flanagan stepped down as coach by mutual agreement. The timing put Holmes' words into sharper focus: the Dragons were not just dealing with one player off his game, but with a result that fed straight into a change at the top.
Dean Young's Left-Side Call
Dean Young kept Holmes in the side for Anzac Day and moved him back to his preferred left side. Holmes said the call gave him a chance to respond: “After the changing of coaches, 'Youngy' gave me a call and he said, 'I want to move you back to your side, just focus on what you do best, what you bring to the team' and he gave me that chance, put that confidence back into me,”
He backed that view with his own frame of reference. “I've been playing, fortunately enough, for over 10 years,” Holmes said, adding that he has played 225 NRL games and does not expect perfection every week. “I never play perfect footy every week as much as I'd love to.”
Roosters Loss, Bye Week
Holmes said he felt he had trained well before Anzac Day and was disappointed by the 62-16 loss to the Sydney Roosters. “I felt like I trained well that week and went all right (against the Roosters),” he said. “I can't say I'm proud of that performance for myself because we lost like that.”
He also pointed to the scale of the team problem. “They still scored on our side, they scored on both sides. We were pretty poor all over the park,” Holmes said. The Dragons then had a bye in round nine, which gave the club a short reset after the loss and the coaching change that followed the South Sydney defeat.
“It's just very disappointing because people don't see how hard we train and what we do at training and stuff like that,” Holmes said ahead of the break. For a winless side that has already absorbed a 30-12 defeat, a 62-16 blowout and a coaching departure, the message is blunt: the next response has to come from the field, not the dressing-room explanation.
