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With the South Sydney Rabbitohs and Sydney Roosters both struggling for form this season and the Parramatta Eels set to cop a huge punishment for salary cap breaches, the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks could emerge as New South Wales’ best hope of preventing the NRL trophy from flying north for a second straight year.
The Sharks will end Round 7 as the highest-ranked NSW club, third on the ladder behind only the premiership favourites and ladder leaders, the Brisbane Broncos, and reigning premiers the North Queensland Cowboys.
The club won their fourth straight match, and fifth in their past six games, by defeating the Canberra Raiders 40-16 at GIO Stadium on Sunday. The victory came on the back of the continued resurgence of Ben Barba, who scored two tries.
It follows impressive victories over the Dragons, Storm, Wests Tigers and Titans and will give their long-suffering fans reason to believe that, after nearly half a century of existence, the club can finally break through for its first title in 2016.
Barba’s resurgence in form comes more than eighteen months after he was released by the Brisbane Broncos following a disappointing 2014 season at Red Hill, despite playing all 25 games that year.
He had arrived at the Broncos as their saviour following a 2013 season which will go down as their worst on record, but never really failed to live up to the hype and appeared a shadow of the player who in 2012 was the competition’s best player.
But the return to Sydney may have revitalised the former Dally M Medallist, and after a slow start to his Sharks career he appears to be rediscovering the touch that saw him take the Bulldogs to the grand final nearly four years ago.
He and former teammate Michael Ennis arrived at the Sharks at a time when they were in huge turmoil on and off the field. Coupled with the addition of James Maloney from the Roosters for this season, hopes are high for the club in 2016.
It seems like only yesterday that the club was at rock bottom as they were embroiled in the ASADA supplements scandal, which came as the club was continuing to build a playing list capable of winning a premiership.
The ramifications were huge – coach Shane Flanagan was suspended for the whole 2014 season and the club regularly made the headlines for all the wrong reasons, including going through more than a month without scoring a single point and having playmaker Todd Carney sacked after the infamous ‘bubbler’ photo went viral.
Having been reluctantly thrust into the head coaching role in the wake of Flanagan’s suspension, caretaker coach Peter Sharp quit midway through the year after failing to win over the playing list he had inherited.
And just as they attempted to avoid their first wooden spoon since 1969, captain Paul Gallen was one of several past and present Sharks players to be suspended for their roles in the club’s 2011 supplements program late in the season.
By the end of it, the Sharks had become a train wreck, and the club faced a huge task in trying to rebuild its image as well as regain the respect and trust of its fans and the National Rugby League.
But now, the club has completely rebuilt and it’s fair to say that the dark days of the ASADA scandal is now well and truly over.
Having recruited Barba and Ennis for the 2015 season, the Sharks were slow to get going, losing their first four matches before recovering to reach the semi-finals, knocking out the reigning premiers South Sydney en route.
This was only just the beginning of the rebirth of the club. The arrival of Roosters premiership winning five-eighth James Maloney for this season could be seen by many as the missing piece in their pursuit of a maiden premiership.
Along with influential captain Paul Gallen and other players such as Valentine Holmes and Wade Graham, the team is starting to gel and as a result many are viewing them as the best hope NSW has of premiership glory this year.
The next-best NSW club, the Parramatta Eels, are just behind them on the premiership ladder but stand to lose up to 20 competition points for salary cap infractions, a penalty that could cost them their first finals berth since 2009.
And the South Sydney Rabbitohs and Sydney Roosters, two teams whom fans are accustomed to seeing at the upper part of the ladder, are both struggling so far in 2016 and are placed eighth and last respectively (though at the time of writing the Roosters are still to play the Panthers and could climb to 14th on Monday night).
The Sharks will have the chance to further put their premiership credentials on display in the next fortnight when they face the Penrith Panthers and Brisbane Broncos at home, where they are so far undefeated.
While the Sharks will start favourites against the Panthers, the clash against the Broncos will provide the most serious test as to where the club is at, following the drama of the ASADA scandal which nearly brought the club to its knees.
The Broncos could have been undefeated by this stage if it wasn’t for a Panthers rookie named Te Maire Martin, who on debut guided his club to a 23-22 victory over the Brisbanites back in Round 3.
Still, Wayne Bennett’s men are the outright competition leaders and the premiership favourites, but will be wary of their recent poor record against the Sharks, having lost three of their last four against the men from the Shire, all of them in Brisbane.
This included when the Sharks came from 22-0 down to somehow win 24-22 at Suncorp Stadium in the midst of their ASADA crisis in 2014. It was one of the few highs the Sharks enjoyed in what was otherwise a well-documented, wretched season for the club.
Win their next two matches and the Sharks, despite their poor history, will emerge as serious premiership contenders in 2016.
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