Shane Flanagan has been given a fresh glimpse at the scale of the job at St George Illawarra after the Dragons dished up a Jekyll and Hyde performance in a disappointing home defeat to the Cowboys.
In their first home game of the NRL season at Kogarah, the Dragons suffered a 46-24 loss, conceding 42 points in succession after leading 18-4 after 20 minutes.
The defeat follows a roller-coaster start to Flanagan’s reign at the Red V.
A 28-4 thumping of the Gold Coast in round one hinted brighter times were ahead, but the fact the Dragons backed that up with a 38-0 away loss to the Dolphins showed there remains significant work to do.
“We’re better than that,” Flanagan said.
“We just need to show some resilience defensively.
“We showed we’ve got players who can score points and play with the football, but we need to be better defensively.
“It’s a new team, a new staff and all the rest of that … but there were some soft tries and there were a few on last tackles that we could’ve handled better.”
The opening 40 minutes on Saturday was a peek behind the curtain of the potential and, more pressingly, the problems facing the new Dragons coach.
After North Queensland winger Murray Taulagi opened the scoring inside five minutes, the Red V went on a rampage, playing with abandon that left Cowboys defenders grasping at air and had the home crowd on their feet.
In the space of 10 minutes, the Dragons posted 18 points, with want-away winger Zac Lomax scoring their first try before converting his own effort and those of Tyrell Sloan and Kyle Flanagan.
The Dragons could have had another were it not for back-rower Raymond Faitala-Mariner dropping an in-goal grubber cold in the 24th minute when they were leading 18-4.
From there Shane Flanagan’s players displayed all the shortcomings that show why this team will not be an overnight fix ahead of next week's meeting with Manly.
Debutant Jesse Marschke was put on report after whacking Chad Townsend high, which gave the Cowboys the platform to send Sam McIntyre over.
Then, Sloan failed to clean up a grubber to the in-goal and powerful North Queensland prop Griffin Neame was on hand to dot the ball down.
On the stroke of halftime, the mercurial Scott Drinkwater crossed and the Cowboys had a 22-18 lead.
“We just had to dig in and get back to running hard,” Cowboys coach Todd Payten said.
Every time the Dragons broke forward the final pass or kick that could have led to a try fell apart, while the Cowboys continually barged their way up-field and capitalised on errors.
Kulikefu Finefeuiaki, Tom Dearden, Valentine Holmes and Townsend all laid on further misery as captain Jason Taumalolo was rested ahead of next week’s derby with the Brisbane Broncos.
“It’s a six-day turn-around again, the world of rugby league needs to know this is going to happen again ... in the future,” Payten said.
“He (Taumalolo) has been in first grade for 15 years and has a degenerative knee issue, we’re just doing our best to look after him.”
The win gives North Queensland their best start to a season in 17 years.
