A Candid Reflection from Valentine Holmes
Valentine Holmes, the St George Illawarra Dragons centre, has openly admitted that there is no excuse for his “very poor” performance in a recent match that ultimately led to the departure of coach Shane Flanagan. Holmes, who earns an estimated $1 million per season, made headlines after being outplayed by South Sydney’s Latrell Mitchell in a round-eight loss.
During that game, Holmes missed 10 tackles, while Mitchell scored a career-best four tries in one of the NRL’s most dominant man-to-man contests in recent memory. This performance was the last straw for Flanagan, who stepped down by mutual agreement two days after the Dragons’ 30-12 loss to the Rabbitohs.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the incident, Holmes expressed gratitude towards interim coach Dean Young for keeping faith in him during the Anzac Day match, when the last-placed Dragons suffered a 12th-straight defeat.
“There’s no excuses for the way I played (against Souths),” Holmes said. “It was very poor. Obviously I’m very grateful I got the opportunity to redeem myself as much as I could this week.”
With 225 NRL games under his belt, Holmes acknowledged that slumps in form are inevitable in a long career.
“I’m not perfect,” he said. “I never play perfect footy every week as much as I’d love to. I’ve had some very bad performances in my past. I’ve been playing, fortunately enough, for over 10 years.”
Holmes did not face the same individual nightmare against the Sydney Roosters on Anzac Day, but no Dragons player acquitted themselves with great distinction in the 62-16 thrashing. The left edge was targeted throughout the game due to the inclusion of undersized debutant Kade Reed and Luciano Leilua’s sin-binning.
Young’s decision to move Holmes back to his preferred left side provided the 30-year-old with a boost in confidence.
“After the changing of coaches, ‘Youngy’ gave me a call and he said, ‘I want to move you back to your side, just focus on what you do best, what you bring to the team’ and he gave me that chance, put that confidence back into me,” he said.
“I felt like I trained well that week and went all right (against the Roosters). I can’t say I’m proud of that performance for myself because we lost like that. They still scored on our side, they scored on both sides. We were pretty poor all over the park.”
The round-nine bye is set to give the winless Dragons a chance to regroup from their latest defeat.
“It’s just very disappointing because people don’t see how hard we train and what we do at training and stuff like that,” Holmes said. “We can score some points when we get down there with good ball, then we just don’t get down there enough, make too many errors, ill-discipline, high tackles and all that stuff.”
