Dragons coach Shane Flanagan slammed his side after they were thumped 38-0 by the Dolphins and forecast changes after a dramatic step back from their Round 1 win.
The Dragons were poor in the first half and were lucky to only trail 10-0 at the break but things got even worse in the second stanza on Sunday.
The Dolphins ran in another five tries while the visitors, who went into the clash as favourites, didn’t even look like scoring in Redcliffe.
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St George Illawarra silenced their pre-season critics with a strong victory over the Titans in their season opener, but they couldn’t back it up.
Flanagan was filthy after the game and said his side had “gone backwards” in the space of just seven days.
“It was the complete opposite to what we had last week, we had energy, we had commitment,” Flanagan said.
“Today’s performance wasn’t good enough for a Dragons jersey.
“Give credit to the opposition, I thought they were really tidy as they stuck to a game plan, ran hard and had only three errors the whole game, so we were poor and they were good.
“We weren’t the better team at halftime but I thought we hung in there and thought we could come back.
“The second half was even worse again so we’ve still got some work to do and I’m really, really disappointed that we’ve gone backwards.
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Dragons skipper Ben Hunt admitted his side, who many predicted to collect the wooden poon this year, was never in the contest.
“Right from the jump it felt like we were on the back foot,” Hunt said.
“They ran harder, won the play-the-ball, were too quick at the ruck and Jeremy Marshall-King gave us a bit of a bath to be honest.”
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Flanagan made it clear he could swing the axe and make a host of changes.
The Dragons already had two players in Blake Lawrie and Luciano Leilua join the team this week after sitting out in Round 1.
“At the moment I probably think we had the best team today that we could put on the paddock,” Flanagan said.
“We got Hame Sele who should be back next week, our second grade played well and we will have a look at it.
“But that’s not good enough tonight and we might have to make some changes.”
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