Paul McGregor has rejected the idea that St George Illawarra were suffering a State of Origin hangover in their 20-16 loss to the Wests Tigers on Sunday.
It was the Benji and Robbie show at Kogarah as the Tigers upset the Dragons.
Robbie Farah laid on three tries while Benji Marshall showed some of his brilliant best to hand the Dragons just their second defeat in their last 11 matches at Jubilee Oval.
Almost 16,000 fans packed into Kogarah on a perfect winter’s afternoon, only for the majority of the crowd to go home disappointed.
All five of St George Illawarra’s Origin representatives backed up after last Wednesday’s third Origin clash as the Dragons trailed 20-6 before launching a late fight back, only to fall just short despite tries to captain Gareth Widdop and fullback Matt Dufty.
But Dragons coach McGregor said any notion the Dragons had suffered an Origin hangover was just an excuse.
“If you look at their minutes and the time off they’ve had in between. You look at their recovery. Paul Vaughan for argument’s sake played all three Origins and was probably the best on the the field [against the Tigers],” he said.
“That’s just a bit of an excuse. We can certainly manage their workload through the GPS systems and what we do at training. But at this stage we need to all get back together and start working hard towards the back end of the year.
“I think our error rate was way too high. There was no penalties blown throughout the game. Their kicking game was really good. We had no field position. Towards the end we really started to play the footy we know we can [but] it was all too late in the end. We just ran out of time.
“When you’ve got no field position, no possession, you keep making errors you don’t get opportunities. We really had no opportunity to play good footy. There’s a lot of tired guys in the room but they proved that when they went after the opposition at the end of the game how good they can be. We’ve just got to make sure we get a couple of good lessons out of that.”
It was the first time the Dragons had lost two matches in a row all season as they slipped from the top of the table to third, two points behind South Sydney and level with Melbourne.
St George Illawarra will look to regroup quickly when they head to Townsville to take on struggling North Queensland on Saturday night before a tricky away fixture against the Sydney Roosters and a home clash with the New Zealand Warriors in Wollongong.
The Dragons do not return to Kogarah until they host Canterbury in the penultimate round on Sunday, August 26.
