'He's seeing it': How Flanagan got Hunt to buy in after rival interest 04:53

Just while we're on the Dragons, you must be delighted as the coach. That's seven wins this year. You're inside the top eight for the time being. Last year, I think the Dragons won five games in total. So you've already eclipsed that 14 rounds into the competition. And to see the happiness and the excitement from the Dragons fans, who can be tough to please, you must be delighted with what you've been able to achieve early days in your coaching career at the Dragons. Yeah.

Oh yeah, like I always thought that it was achievable. I don't think we've overachieved, I don't know.

We've just sort of gone along. I reckon we probably should be one more win ahead. If I'm being really critical of the group, I thought there was one or two games there that we could have got and we needed to nail one of them. So we're going where I expected us to be. It's a good club, a big club. The supporters are sometimes hard to please because they want to win and a lot of them have been brought up through that winning era. And obviously...

winning 11 comps in a row. I know it's a long, long time ago, but it still lives there. As I said, it's a really big club and I just need to change a few things. The players are all on board now. They're working really, really hard at training and better things to come. I want to ask you about the Ben Hunt situation from last year when he was

Well, it was reported he wanted to leave, he wanted out, and he wanted to go to the Titans. Yep. How did you and him handle all that together? How's that come? Well, if you just put it in black and white, put it in one side of the piece of paper, the club wasn't winning. He lost his coach that he had a lot of faith and belief in, Anthony Griffin. And...

And on the other side, there was some clubs that were circling that were telling him, yeah, we've got success. We're going to play semifinals. We'll give you the same amount of money and we'll extend your contract for a couple of years. And would you be interested? And I understand that, you know,

There were some negatives at the Dragons at that time, but I had no relationship really with Ben. I had to build a relationship over when I got the job halfway through last year. So I built that with him and some trust and belief and involved him in decisions that we were making on and off the field, recruitment, training, everything we did, I included him in it, which I did with Gal, which I do with all my leaders because they're part of it and

build that relationship and now he's seeing it and he's part of it now so like when we play bad or something doesn't work it's not just Ben Hunt it's the whole system has fallen down and as I said he feels part of it and he's running training and running when we train how we train so it's just a whole club situation and I just think Ben can see what we're trying to build at the club and he's on board. One of the criticisms if there is one Shane is that you haven't signed

um, too many players. And you did say early days that you were a recruitment coach. Have you got anyone in mind that you're looking at, at this stage? Obviously you're losing Zach Lomax at the end of the year, which is going to free up some money. Are there any sort of names on the, on the radar or any insights you can give the fans? Yeah, well, I don't know if that's true to be honest, Mark. So, um,

This year, you have a look at our best team this year. I know he's not a big name, but Tom Eisenhuth has been outstanding for us week in, week out. He had one bad week a couple of weeks ago, but he had to play in the centres. He's been great for us, you know, good value. Luciano Lulua is a very, very good player, and

So, you know, he's – and Ray for Taylor Mariner has been – last week he was man of the match. So I think we have, you know, obviously Kyle came to the club. We've changed a few things around there. We'll get some more recruits next year. We'll get three or four for next year on top of the three or four we've already got. Mm-hmm.

So, you know, that's seven out of our starting 13. But you have missed out on a few along the way. You know what I mean? And we have missed out on a few. But the thing that I've got to get across mainly to Dragon supporters is they haven't left to go to another club. They've stayed at their same club. They said, oh, you know, you didn't get Thomas Deard and you didn't get so-and-so. They stayed at their own club. And I'm comfortable with that. If they moved and went to another club and we miss them...

That's a miss. That's a dead set miss. You'd start to say, why did they not come to us? But they stayed at their own club. So that's fair, fair. Well, I'm glad you've had the opportunity to answer that because, you know, Dragons fans I speak to that want to be overly critical, they say, well, we haven't signed any players. And I say, well, I can put the question to Flano and I'm glad you've made that clear to Dragons fans that may be a little abused by the signing and recruitment. And also...

On the back of last year, they won five games. So it's hard to paint a picture and tell a story. Hey, boys, we're going to get better. We had one origin player last year. Now we've got three. Next year, I hope I've got four or five. And the club's changing. So now when I go and tell a story to a player that I want to come to a club, hey, listen, we're on the border of the eight now. We're going to get better next year. Come and join us. And it's not like sort of pie in the sky. It's sellable.