Welcome to September, that famous time of year known for hayfever, finals and the adding of another completed season to the Sharks’ unremitting premiership drought.
Another year of frustration was completed on Saturday with a loss in the slop to the Tigers, and with it the questions grow louder again.
Are these guys ever going to taste what it’s like to be numero uno outside of Amco Cups, minor premierships and ET’s glory years in the Sexiest Men in League competitions?
If you’ve watched footy, you can identify a pattern and you’ve given up on Harold Holt coming home, then you would have to say that it’s not going to happen in our lifetimes. Surely only the deep dreamers and the lunatic fringe can still hold hope these days.
The feeling about the club is now so negative that even when the Sharks qualify for finals, land a property development or part ways with Ricky Stuart, it still feels like something is bound to go awry- say like, an unexpected jet stream of warm fluid to the chin.
No matter how many times you think they’ve turned the corner, out of habit your body still feels a heavy empathetic sag of imminent depression like you’re sitting above the water on a dunking tank and there’s a Major League pitcher waiting in line for a throw. Something’s about to be drowned again, and it’s not Paul Gallen’s head in grand final Cristal.
Despite the funk of impotence that plagues a club with a 47-year-long premiership virginity, it’s not all doom and gloom for the Sharks. There has been a tiny win in recent decades with the embarrassment of being the only suckers without a pennant somewhat dulled by the entry of new teams in to the competition.
As I said- a tiny win.
While it’s a straw being clutched the size of a sewerage pipe, just try to relate. When you haven’t won a nickel in your lifetime, I’m sure inspiration can be drawn from being stalled on the starting line next to three other cars who also need the NRMA or the AOD.
But how long will this micro-dose of relief last for Sharks fans and their suffering families?
The answer to this question is down to you, Cowboys, Warriors and Titans. As the only other remaining teams without a premiership, and despite spending a smidge of the time in the competition compared to Cronulla, will one upgrade the humiliation to gold-class by beating them to the punch?
If the world was fair, the queue for the have-nots would be formed with those who’ve waited the longest up the front. But this is footy – a world where there’s no manners – and something tells me that it would be cruelly fitting for the Hammerhead to be nodding off just as his number is called.
It’s been a close-run thing on three occasions, with the Warriors making two deciders and the Cowboys one. Considering these short-term successes and the abilities of both clubs to seemingly govern and recruit reasonably well, I will put my Jatz on the line and say that one of these two will beat the Sharks to premiership glory. There, I said it- now go ahead and shower me in empty Breezers.
That leaves one team in the trio that the Sharks should be concentrating their efforts on beating, and that’s the broke and friendless Titans from the Gold Coast graveyard. *covers head and braces for more flying pre-mixers from the cranky Titans fan(s).*
So like an adolescent pact in a ribald 1980s high school movie, it’s the Sharks and the Titans in a race to break the cherry.
It may sound crazy, but we could be sitting on a modern day rivalry akin to Federer versus Nadal here, just minus the continued success and winner’s kitties. It’s a battle that could be engaging and close-run, mainly because the clubs are so evenly matched with their bumbling.
They’ve both been known to make some clangers at the checkout, with an abundant affection for five-year deals, paling journeymen and the injured, plus they also struggle when it comes to coaches, with the Titans having a tendency to hang on to theirs too long, while the Sharks love appointing the wrong ones.
It’s the type of football operations that point to a ding dong battle, and it will be played out in some fitting coliseums too, with Shark Park being described as Iceland with goalposts and the Titans home patch as being full of snakes and usually empty.
In saying this, with both club’s famous financial issues, it’s a contest that could well be decided by a forfeit.
Cronulla ran off the proceeds of wet t-shirt competitions at Carmen’s for years, but after fiscally reviving by flogging off a block of earth, they’ve now blown a majority of their good work on NRL fines. As for the Titans, they were given the keys to a 16th franchise on the basis they were mafia-like with their capital, only to have Michael Searle blow it on a pumped-up facility that was less ‘high performance academy’ and more ‘Mt Druitt TAFE’.
So this is where the Roarers come in. People: who will win the race in this zany comedy of footy hijinks? Or if you like your humour dark, do you predict that either might not even survive long enough to experience a glorious climax?
Note: bets on a drawn grand final between the pair will not be honoured.
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