'Arrogance from them': Dragons' inexcusable move towards premiership hero
He played 141 games for the Red V between 2007 and 2013, but his time at the club ended in messy fashion when he was only offered a one-year deal. The halfback finished his career with stints at the London Broncos and Penrith Panthers, but returned to St George Illawarra as the club's NRLW coach in 2021.
However that too ended in acrimony when he was sacked last year. The 40-year-old previously opened up on his heartache to be sacked, and revealed how his wife and daughters had picked him up in the aftermath.
But speaking this week on 'The Bye Round' podcast with James Graham, Soward offered stunning new insight into how bad his relationship with the Dragons has become. The former NSW State of Origin player revealed club bosses had to contact a third party to invite Soward to an upcoming reunion, which will mark 15 years since the 2010 premiership.
"There's [a former player's day] coming up next month, and this sums it up for me," he said. "They had to ring someone, a mutual person that works at the club, to get my details to invite me to it. I worked there last year. I went 'surely you've got my email and phone number'."
Graham, who played at the Dragons from 2018 to 2020, revealed he got the invite via email. "To me it's arrogance from them," Soward said.
The 40-year-old also revealed there were certain people within the club who didn't reach out to him when he was sacked as NRLW coach, although NRL coach Shane Flanagan and assistant Dean Young did. "There's people there that knew me before I came back into coaching that I would talk to, that see around the traps, that when I got let go, didn't check in on me, didn't see anything at all," he said.
"And rugby league is a really small world. If you really, really hate someone, that's hard to come back from. But there's guys there that I expected to reach out. I had guys from other clubs, former players, Ben Hornby, Brett Morris, Dean Young rang me, personally. 'Flanno' rang me. But there's other people in that organisation that looked at me and just treated me like [they did in 2013]."
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Soward's form declined in 2012 and 2013, and the club opted to blood some youngsters rather than re-sign him long-term. The Dragons offered him a one-year extension, but the Panthers were willing to offer four.
"People say, 'Why'd you leave the Dragons?' The Dragons got rid of me," he said. "They didn't want me there in 2013, which is fine. When one club is offering you four years, and a club you've won a premiership with offers you one year without any resolution to sit down and say, 'Where do you want to get to?'... That's what I'm filthy about."
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Speaking last year after being let go as NRLW coach, Soward said: "I've got a wife and two very strong girls at home that have been my rocks, and the players within the group, pretty much everyone reached out. I'm not the first coach to not coach again. Was the timing great? No. Was it done the right way? I disagree with how it was done."
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