Having already locked down home-grown Jillaroos Sam Bremner, Kezie Apps and Rikeya Horne, the club has now added young-guns Talia Atfield, Shakiah Tungai and Keely Davis as well as seven-time Illawarra premiership-winner Georgie Brooker.

Coach Daniel Lacey said the addition of the quartet was a nod to both the club’s future and its past efforts in developing in women’s pathways.

“It’s really pleasing and one of the most satisfying things of being  a coach,” Lacey said.

“I’ve been around the women’s game for a while now and to see their progression and be able to offer them a contract is really pleasing.  It’s a good sign of things to come but a really good indication of where we’ve been and how much women’s rugby league has progressed.

“There was a criteria you had to meet to be given a license and we were pretty confident in what we’ve done in the area over the years. We’re a club that’s going to have eight (local) juniors in the inaugural year and I don’t think anyone would have thought that would happen five years ago.

“It’s really opened peoples’ eyes to what has happened behind the scenes rather than just girls playing on Saturday. The girls have put in a lot of work and the staff have put in a lot of work and the club is backing them all the way to playing NRL.”

While there are still some roster spots to be filled, Lacey said the full squad will come together with a view to, not just immediate, but long-term success as the competition develops.

“It’s a five-year license so we’ve got to look long-term there,” Lacey said.

“The club’s vision was to look to the locals, and it was always my vision to try and make this NRL team a team we don’t have to completely change [each season].

“There’s a reason we’ve recruited the players we have. We don’t want our team photo to be 22 new players next year, we want to try and build a side for the long-term.

“Some are younger and will probably get drip-fed into this competition and we’ll see how they go. We’ll obviously be competitive but, by putting in these young local players, they play here, they live in the area and they’ve got the Dragons at heart which is a good model moving forward.” 

Part of the club’s long-game has also been the introduction of a women’s High Performance Unit that introduced 19 players – including their latest signing – to an elite training program over seven weeks.

“We’ve noticed that the top marquee players are getting the access to all the elite training and training programs and then there’s a bit of a drop off to everyone else in their pathway,” Lacey said.

“Some of these girls have come on the scene really fast we’re finding we need to get them into that [elite] environment and see how they react and give them the tools to work through that.  

“We get an abundance of emails from interstate, overseas from people who see our pathway and ask us how do I become an NRL player? Six months ago it was a tricky question to answer.

“Now we can say, we’ve got a strong local competition and you can go into high performance and be given all the tools that you need to. Having that direct pathway makes things a bit clearer for people.”