Dragons hooker Damien Cook has jumped to the defence of Shane and Kyle Flanagan following the Red V’s gutsy 34-20 win over Parramatta.
Dragons halfback Kyle has copped plenty of heat over his indifferent form this season in the two weeks since the Dragons lost to Cronulla.
Shane has stuck fat with his son in the halves, also leading to criticism from Dragons fans.
Cook jumped in during the post-game press conference when Flanagan was detailing the reason why the halves weren’t the problem across the Dragons’ two-game slide.
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The Dragons skipper blasted fans for some of the criticism directed at the Flanagans in recent weeks.
“I’m going to jump in here … Fans can all have their opinion,” Cook said.
“There’s nothing wrong with that. But to bash someone online and non stop going at it … online bullying is different thing. That’s something we can’t have and we’re not going to support it.
“I was very happy to see Kyle get a try tonight. He works hard at what he does. It hasn’t been a halves issue the last couple of weeks. We’ve just been beaten.
“Tonight we played out best footy and you can see what happens when the forwards lay a platform, the halves can do their job.”
The Dragons coach believed the condemnation of his son from fans and the media has been “deadset unfair”.
“We’re not for one second saying Kyle is the elite of the elite, but even though he’s my son, there’s no kid that tries harder than him,” Flanagan said.
“It wasn’t the halves issue the last two games we lost. It had nothing to do with the halves. We dropped kicks and we got run over in the middle part of the field.
“We turned that around today, we caught our kicks, and we ran hard and got good field position.
“It’s a bit of a domino effect, but we can’t be pointing the finger at our halves for the last two weeks.
“I will deal with it, Kyle will deal with it and the team will deal with it.”
