New St George Illawarra coach Anthony Griffin isn’t panicking just yet despite the Dragons’ demoralising 48-16 loss to South Sydney in the Charity Shield on Saturday night.

The game was over before half-time at Mudgee with Latrell Mitchell starring for the Rabbitohs.

“Lucky it’s a trial and not round one,” Griffin said post-match.

“They were pretty slick… they were 19 from 19 in the first half, they’re a really good side obviously and they taught us a lesson.

“I thought defensively down the other end of the field we made them kick the ball to us but as soon as they got good ball they just outplayed us.

“We get to have a look at ourselves against some really good opposition and there is a lot to work on.

“To their credit, their scramble defence was brilliant – we probably bombed two or three tries with poor handling but their scramble defence was really good.

“We were just on the wrong leg all the time, if a ball went to ground they picked it up and we didn’t. No one likes getting 30 points put on you in a half of football but there’s a lot of positives to what we did with the ball, some of our kicking game, putting them under pressure down their end of the field was pretty good but up the other end we have a lot of work to do.”