St George Illawarra players say they deserved to be lashed by Shane Flanagan after the loss that is set to rule them out of the NRL finals, ruing inconsistency as the story of their season.
The crestfallen coach said the Dragons were "terrible" losing 44-40 to struggling Parramatta on Saturday, when a win would have moved Saints within inches of their first finals berth since 2018.
Flanagan apologised to the Dragons' fans for a "disgraceful" 26-6 first half before standing up and walking out of his press conference following less than three minutes of questioning.
"(It was) understandable," hooker Connor Muhleisen said of Flanagan's reaction.
"We had everything to play for and we didn't really show up and give what the season deserved, what our fans deserved and what we deserved to each other as well.
"We were below par, that's the reality of it."
First-choice hooker Jacob Liddle watched the defeat from afar after his wife Kate went into labour the previous night.
He called Flanagan at 6.30am Saturday to let him know he would be unable to make the game, the couple later welcoming their first child, a baby girl.
"To miss the game was disappointing but other things come first," Liddle said.
Liddle understood Flanagan's withering post-match assessment.
"It was probably honest. We got 44 points put on us. All we had to do was defend a bit better and we would've won that game. It was disappointing," he said.
Liddle was left wondering what might have been had the Dragons been able to find consistency this season.
The joint venture only won back-to-back games twice this season and despite impressive defeats of Penrith and Melbourne, the side has leaked 30 points or more in 10 of 23 games so far.
"There's obviously heaps of learnings we've taken out of this year. One of our biggest ones is trying to get that consistency," Liddle said.
"We sort of went win loss, win loss. We'll look at that over the pre-season, how we can work on that, what is causing that. There's heaps to learn, heaps to get better."
Favourites to snare the remaining top-eight spot as recently as Saturday morning, the Dragons can realistically only play finals if they beat Canberra this weekend and the Dolphins and Newcastle draw.
"There is a slight chance, technically, but that doesn't mean anything if we don't win this weekend," Muhleisen said.
"We put everything we have, all our eggs in one basket, to get the win this weekend and then whatever happens, happens."
