Ben Hunt contract drama won't rip Dragons apart: Interim coach Ryan Carr

A week after being outgunned 48-18 by the Warriors in Wollongong, the Dragons were blown away by the Sharks on Thursday despite enjoying a four-point lead through 25 minutes.

It ended another tumultuous week for the joint venture, with skipper Ben Hunt's pleas for an immediate release falling on deaf ears at a meeting with club officials on Monday.

Read more: Dismal Dragons blown away by red-hot Sharks

Despite vague assertions from club figures that he will see out the season, the saga's sure to attract more unwanted attention should the run of poor results continue.

While there's sure to be the dreaded "outside noise" Carr insists it's not an ongoing distraction.

"It's pretty easy mate," Carr said when asked how playing group can block out the noise.

"We don't even talk about it at training, we really don't. We've moved on from all that stuff.

"He's here with us, he's part of our team and he's going to continue to be that for the rest of this year. That's all we can focus on.

"[The result's] got nothing to do with Ben and his off-field stuff, it's got everything to do with all of us involved at the club.

"It's going take all of us to fight our way out of it. We've got a group there that have got each other's back and we're not going allow things like that to be excuses.

"Excuses are everywhere around you, you can find as many as you want, but it's up to us not to look for them, just look in the mirror and find the answers within ourselves."

Hunt had just one run for five metres, though he was credited with a try assist for an offload Tyrell Sloan took on an 80-metre dash to the try-line.

It came a week after the 33-year-old produced just three runs for 24 metres against the Warriors, with the lack of involvement sure to attract more scrutiny moving forward.

It did come on a night in which the Dragons had just 37 per cent of possession, conditions in which any half would struggle to inject themselves.

Read more: Players hold the cards in contract stand-off game

For his part, Hunt didn't point to the tumultuous week to excuse his performance.

"I can't speak for everyone at the club, but it hasn't really been spoken about," Hunt said.

"We had a good week in training and a good week in the meetings and no one had been talking about it. I was actually a bit crook at the start of the week and only had captain's run, but we had a really good captain's run.

"We prepared really well and I was feeling pretty confident coming in [to the game]. I felt like we actually competed a lot harder tonight than we did last week. The scoreboard doesn't reflect that, I felt like we competed hard.

"We just need to come together as a group, fight harder than we have in the last two weeks and get some wins. We can't shy away from it, we've just got to keep turning up trying to be better, look after each other and play as a team."

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