It takes a special kind of resilience to be a Dragons fan, where life in the red and white washing machine cycles through the same emotions each year before inevitably ending with Mad Monday somewhere beside a pool in early September.

But arguably there hasn’t been a more chastening day than the one Jason Ryles, a club legend pegged for a long-term NRL coaching career, looked under the bonnet and said, ‘nah, this isn’t for me’.

For all the positive things Ryles has done ripping up and rebuilding the Eels this year, it’s easy to forget he had a four-year contract only waiting for his signature at the Dragons.

As is the modern way in the wooing process for a head coach, he was shown through everything, including a salary cap so bent out of shape not even a blacksmith would consider touching it. Ryles certainly didn’t.

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But a couple of years on, are the Dragons finally getting somewhere despite being destined to miss the finals for a seventh straight season, a stretch worse than every other NRL team not named Wests Tigers.

Mathematically, they can still make the finals with four rounds left, but when you start talking mathematical chances it generally means no chance.

The NRL is designed, by its salary cap, to give every team theoretically an equal chance of making the finals every year. To have clubs like the Dragons, Tigers and Bulldogs (up until last year) with big fan bases watching on from the outside for so long hasn’t been healthy for the overall competition.

“It doesn’t weigh on us,” coach Shane Flanagan says of the drought. “It’s a big club and we want to play finals every year, but in the modern game it’s hard to play finals every year.

“You talk about clubs that play finals every year, the one that comes straight to mind is Melbourne. What have they got? Stability. That’s what we’re working on.

“And you need talent. I was never going to come in and say, ‘we’re going to win the comp’.”

If you looked hard enough through the driving rain the last two weeks, you might have finally seen a Shane Flanagan blueprint coming to life at the Red V.

The cynics would say the awful conditions have dragged the table-topping Raiders and in-form Sharks back to a level which suits the Dragons, who play like the seagull perennially scrapping for the last chip.

But it’s also worth noting the club’s crippling injury toll which will this week rob them of their first-choice centres (Valentine Holmes and Moses Suli), back-rowers (Jaydn Su’A and Dylan Egan) and promising props (Toby and Ryan Couchman).

It might only be a little thing, but in the moments after they beat Cronulla for the first time in 11 attempts last week, injured players such as Suli, Su’A and Holmes mobbed their sodden teammates on the field.

“I definitely think the club is connected at the moment,” Flanagan says. “We know we can play at that level.

“Our season in review is the early games we lost by a point and a couple where we scored more tries than the opposition – and we needed to nail them. There are probably five games there (we should have won) and if we won those, we’re not even discussing this. We’re in the top four.

“Maybe we were developing as a team, maybe we weren’t connected as much as we should have been at the start of the year, maybe a few new players weren’t ready, but we need to get our learnings from it and take them.

“But you also should have seen the excitement when Hayden Buchanan was told he was going to make his debut. He’s trained all year and the support they show the young kids who get a chance. They’re really connected.”

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It was perhaps not a surprise the Dragons signed Flanagan to a contract extension until 2028 recently, even if the speed of the negotiations (wrapped up in a week) were.

The last thing the Dragons board, led by influential media executive Andrew Lancaster, who has had his term extended himself, wanted was a slew of headlines about the coach’s future heading into next year.

So, what do the Dragons need to do be a top four powerhouse for the first time since the heady Wayne Bennett days?

Much like Penrith did to crawl its way out of the big black cat hole it found itself in more than a decade ago, the Dragons have found a good crop of juniors, mostly forwards, they can build the club around.

This year alone, Flanagan has handed NRL debuts to seven players: Buchanan, Egan, Jacob Halangahu, Nathan Lawson, Loko Pasifiki Tonga, Hamish Stewart and Nick Tsougranis. Flanagan said he thought he might debut “four or five” at the start of the year. He’s had to go for more.

It’s part of the reason why the club let its longest-serving player, Jack de Belin, walk to Parramatta when fans bemoaned his impact as one of the club’s best in the forwards this year.

De Belin will play his 250th NRL game in Auckland on Friday night and would have nudged the club’s all-time games record with an injury free season in 2026.

“It was a decision the club made and it was a salary cap management thing with Hamish Stewart, Dylan Egan, the Couchmans, Loko Pasifiki-Tonga coming through,” Flanagan says. “It wasn’t my decision, the club made it and we have to move on.”

St George Illawarra’s leadership void is not as dearth as it has been in previous seasons, largely thanks to the recruitment of co-captains Clint Gutherson and Damien Cook.

On his first day of pre-season last year, Gutherson bounded up Mt Keira to win the Dragons’ time trial. It raised eyebrows at Parramatta, who weren’t sure his knees could withstand a punishing summer, particularly one which started so early.

“Day one Gutho said, ‘I’m going to win this’,” Flanagan says. “He led them up the top. He was first up there. And every player in the team loves Cooky, and the way he plays and he’s just so professional. You talk about the team being connected, that’s because of the two leaders.”

But the coach knows more recruitment is needed, primarily a front-rower for the young forwards to learn off, a playmaker and outside back. Then, he thinks there will be a squad capable of challenging for the top four.

At the moment, Daniel Atkinson will arrive from the Sharks next year as the Dragons’ biggest signing having been given limited NRL game time this season. He’ll be in the halves mix with Lyhkan King-Togia and Flanagan’s son, Kyle, who has bore the brunt of fan criticism at stages throughout the year wearing the No.7 despite a string of solid performances.

“He can play seven, six, nine and he competes hard,” Shane Flanagan says. “Whether he’s my son or not, he gets judged the same as everyone else and he’s doing a really good job at the moment.

“Atko has been a bit out of sight and out of mind. He’s had some small patches of minutes and he’s a big bonus for us. He could play 13 as a ball-playing middle if we need so we’ve got that flexibility there.”

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Dolphins forward Josh Kerr will also return to the Red V.

The case for recruitment should be helped on two fronts.

The club poached Daniel Anderson from the Roosters to head up its recruitment, not an insignificant move given the ex-coach’s connections throughout the game while easing Flanagan’s off-field workload, and early next year the club opens its state-of-the-art high-performance facility in Wollongong to finally bring the entire operation – from football to administration – under the one roof. The Dragons have even recently toured Parramatta’s centre of excellence to understand what is required in the modern day NRL arms race.

But it will amount to little in the eyes of fans if, in the next couple of years, they can’t snap one of the most perplexing finals droughts in Australian sport.

“I just think it’s a process sometimes,” Flanagan says. “There are a lot of things you need to get right – and top of that is attitude. The players need to understand what team I want as well, the standards and values, and the way we want to play.

“It’s taken some time but we’re slowly getting there.”