Dragons vow to give Ponga the Turbo treatment

Dragons players have vowed to put Dally M Medallist Kalyn Ponga to the test in Newcastle on Friday night like they did to Sea Eagles superstar Tom Trbojevic.

Trbojevic is regarded as one of the NRL’s best players but the Manly fullback had a match to forget last Saturday night after producing five errors and being caught out of position when Tyrell Sloan sealed St George Illawarra's 20-12 win.

St George Illawarra coach Shane Flanagan revealed afterwards that his team had set out with a plan to shut down Trbojevic and forward Tom Eisenhuth said they would be looking to pressure Ponga the same way.

“When Tom plays well, Manly play well, so we made his night as hard as possible and he was a bit quieter than he has been, but we’ve got to do it again this week,” Eisenhuth said.

“Kalyn's a quality player, so I think every team that comes up against them needs to do a job on him because he's such an important part of their attack and no doubt we'll be trying to do the same thing against the Knights.”

The Dragons are chasing their third win of the season so far in Newcastle on Friday night after beating the Titans in Round 1, losing to the Dolphins and Cowboys, and then overcoming the Sea Eagles last weekend.

The team showed greater resilience against Manly than in either of their losses, with the win built on the back of defence, including a period where they held out the Sea Eagles for 17 consecutive tackles on their own line.

However, Eisenhuth warned that they couldn’t rely on a repeat effort against the Knights, who will be desperate to kick start their season after just one win in their opening four matches.

“They've been playing some reasonable footy and they've got some quality attack so that's going to be a challenge but I think we're up for it,” he said.

“We need to start being consistent. We can't just rock up once every few weeks, we need to be rocking up every week and having a crack, so that's a big focus for us this week.”

Fellow off-season recruit Kyle Flanagan also said the Dragons needed to be more consistent within games as well as from week-to-week.

However, he said St George Illawarra players had taken confidence from their win against Manly.

“Personally, I've been quite positive about some of the things that we have been showing in games,” Flanagan said.

"Probably against the Dolphins, that wasn't a performance that we want to pride ourselves on but, other than that, we've been attacking quite well.

"There's just been a few lapses in defence that caused us trouble. It was probably just a commitment thing, having that mentality of 'one more set to turn them away'.

"Turning away teams from your try-line, you get a lot of confidence and energy out of doing that.

“The last 12 minutes of [last week’s] game, that's exactly what we had to do and that got us a win in the end. We had 17 players out there that wanted it more than them."