A fanbase pushed to its limit. A coach pleading for patience as the season continues to unravel.
"Stay with us."
The Dragons suffered another defeat, a 30-12 thumping at the hands of the Warriors and asked the faithful to hold on a little longer, even as their boos echoed around Kogarah.
It was a familiar horror show for the Red V in Round 12. Alofiana Khan-Pereira, Te Maire Martin and Dallin Watene-Zelezniak showed out running riot on a sodden Kogarah night.
Missing 35 tackles and conceding 5 linebreaks, while completing sets at 69%, Young searched for silver linings, insisting his side were "building".
"Yeah, I think so. The boys kept on fighting all the way to the end, and that's what I expect," he said at the press conference on Saturday night.
He also found time to acknowledge the supporters who had shown up to the games through the rain, through the losses, through the ladder position nobody wanted to look at.
"I know they're in a tough spot and we appreciate all the fans turning up tonight, where we're sitting on the ladder, and to have so many of those fans turn up, pay their hard-earned and sit in the pouring rain.
"We appreciate it, we've got a fan day tomorrow and all the boys are going to be thanking everyone that turns up tomorrow.
"So stay with us, we're building."
His post-match autopsy came in two distinct chapters. The first: a completion rate that fell off a cliff after a promising start.
The second: a physical contest the Dragons simply lost, outmuscled, outworked, and ultimately overwhelmed by a Warriors outfit who knew exactly how to exploit it.
"We started the game pretty good. We went six from six and started well, from that point I think we were at 69 per cent (completion) after that."
"I was just saying to the lads downstairs, that's going to make it really, really hard against the sides that are down the bottom of the competition.
"But it's nearly mission impossible against the side that's coming second. So we need to address that, and then I thought we lost the physical battle.
"I thought the Warriors were really good at that. Their back five ran really hard, and we lost the collisions, and then we tried to slow down the ruck off the back of that.
"Then we cooked ourselves with six agains."
Damien Cook fielded the harder question: whether a team drowning in errors and starved of points was simply a team that had stopped believing in itself.
He rejected the premise, pointing the finger not at fragile confidence but at a side creating its own turbulence.
"I definitely think our attack on their try line can be a bit better, but that's coming off the back of putting ourselves under scoreboard pressure and then looking at chase points," he said.
"(There's) a lot of work we have to do in (defence), so we didn't get too many opportunities down there. So, probably trying to force it a bit too much.
"It's definitely a work on for us next week, but probably going off the last two weeks, there's a lot of good things, we just need to put them all together."
For now, the Dragons continue their season without a win, and their season doesn't get any easier.
They play the Brisbane Broncos at Suncorp Stadium next Sunday, followed by the Cronulla Sharks in Round 14.
