ST GEORGE Illawarra coach Paul McGregor says the Dragons won’t be drawn into the furore surrounding star fullback Josh Dugan in the wash up to NSW’s State of Origin series loss.
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Dugan and Blues teammate Blake Ferguson have come in for heavy criticism following revelations they spent their day off in camp drinking at the Lennox Point Hotel six days out from the decider.
They did not break any team rules, nor were there any suggestions of misbehaviour from the pair, but the decision to consume alcohol in lead up to such an important match has led many question the culture within the Blues set up.
The saga also revived memories of the pair’s infamous Canberra rooftop drinking session in 2013 that ultimately saw them leave the Raiders.
NSW coach Laurie Daley is yet to publicly address the controversy but Dugan took to Instagram to defend himself on Wednesday admitting to an “error of judgement” but hitting out at sections of the media for inflaming the controversy.
McGregor was tight-lipped on the matter on Thursday.
“Which one, because they’re bringing stuff up from four years ago now?” McGregor said when asked about the incident.
“I’ve always said if something’s out of my control I don’t give it too much energy and that’s the truth of it. That was a different environment and what happened there was Josh’s choice.
“I had a good conversation with Josh [Thursday] morning because it’s the first time Josh has been back to training and he knows how I feel on the matter. Certainly our focus is about what we need to do now and not what’s happened there.
“Getting us back together is very important. We’ve had a lot of distractions of late around what’s happening with rep footy and players missing in games.
“Today’s the first day we’re all back together as a squad and there’s no distractions outside what we need to do on the training park to perform well. We haven’t had that since round 10.”
The Dugan drama comes as the Dragons look to breathe new life into their finals charge after dropping seven of their past 10 games.
It’s seen them drop to eighth spot on the ladder heading into Sunday’s clash with Manly where they’ll be boosted by the return of star forward Tyson Frizell, who was rested from his side’s golden-point loss to Canberra last week.
“It’s good to have Tyson back, we gave him five days off post-Origin to get over his bumps and bruises,” McGregor said.
“It was evident he’d been injured for some time and that was a tough contest [in game three]. He’s back training and looking forward to playing this weekend.
“He’ll be back in his edge back row position and we’re really expecting him to improve going into the back end because he’s really important to what we do.”
Russell Packer hobbled from the field with hip injury six minutes into the loss to Canberra but ran on Thursday and is a strong chance to play on Sunday.
“Rusell’s a very strong character so he’ll give himself every chance to play and my feeling is he’s more likely to play than not to play,” McGregor said.