At last, after half a century, Cronulla are premiers

It seemed like only yesterday the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks were in turmoil on and off the field.

In February 2013, just as the club was about to build towards a maiden premiership, the club found itself embroiled in the centre of a huge drug scandal which would weigh down on the club for the 18 long months that followed.

All the wash-up from the NRL grand final:
» LORD: Gallen leads Sharks into history books
» PRICHARD: 13 extra seconds, but the Sharks did it
» Five talking points
» Ten best tweets from the match
» Sharks player ratings
» Storm player ratings
» Match report: Sharks’ wait over
» Re-live the match with our live blog

Coach Shane Flanagan was suspended indefinitely prior to the start of the season as the club launched an investigation into their 2011 season in which they were alleged to have injected illegal supplements into their players.

The players who were implicated were offered six-month suspensions, which would’ve covered the entirety of the 2013 season, but they all declined. Flanagan was reinstated as coach on the eve of Round 3, and the club eventually finished fifth, losing to the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles in a semi-final.

But their world was turned upside down in December that year when it was announced that Flanagan would be suspended for twelve months, trainer Trent Elkin deregistered, and the club fined $1 million.

This followed ASADA’s investigation into the club’s 2011 supplements program, details of which were not made public.

The penalties came as a massive blow to a club that had struggled financially at the back end of the noughties and the early part of this decade.

Consequently, the club, under caretaker coach Peter Sharp (and later James Shepherd), spent most of the 2014 season rooted to the bottom of the ladder, at one stage enduring more than a month without scoring a single point.

Then, with three rounds remaining, numerous players, including captain Paul Gallen, accepted backdated twelve-month suspensions (starting 21 November 2013) that would see them miss only the remainder of the season.

On the field, the club won just five matches, scoring the least amount of points of any team across 26 rounds as they crashed to their first wooden spoon since 1969.

Five-eighth Todd Carney was sacked midway through the season after a lewd ‘bubbling’ photo of him in a toilet went viral on Twitter, and he was never given the chance to defend himself in front of the Sharks’ board.

CEO Steve Noyce, who had also overseen on-and-off field trouble during his time at the Sydney Roosters, was also shown the door as the club set about repairing its tarnished image.

The rebuilding started with the recruitment of Michael Ennis and Ben Barba from the Bulldogs and Brisbane Broncos respectively, that was then followed by the appointment of Lyall Gorman as the club’s Group CEO.

The arrival of Barba was seen as a massive risk for the Sharks, after he had failed to live up to his price tag in the Queensland capital, despite playing all 25 games for the Broncos in 2014.

He had left the Bulldogs at the end of 2013 following gambling and alcohol issues.

However, his arrival in the Shire led to many fans raising their hopes that the club could get back on the right track following a tumultuous two seasons.

With their new recruits on board, as well as coach Shane Flanagan back on deck following his twelve-month suspension, the Sharks began 2015 slowly, losing their first four games before rebounding to finish sixth with 14 wins and 10 losses.

They then ended the premiership defence of the South Sydney Rabbitohs in an elimination final at Allianz Stadium before being humiliated 39-0 by eventual premiers the North Queensland Cowboys in the semi-final in Townsville.

It was that loss which would sting the club for the off-season that followed, during which they signed James Maloney from the Sydney Roosters.

Looking back now, it’s fair to say that it was the kick up the backside they needed if they were to become true premiership contenders in 2016.

The Sharks started this season slowly, losing two of their first three games before embarking on a club-record fifteen-match winning streak between rounds 4 and 20.

They emerged as NSW’s best hope for the title this year after recent heavyweights the South Sydney Rabbitohs and Sydney Roosters struggled for early-season form, while the Parramatta Eels had their year derailed by salary cap breaches.

The Sharks then finished off the minor rounds poorly, losing four of their last five matches, including to non-finalists the Dragons and the Rabbitohs, to drop to third on the ladder by the end of Round 26.

They were then sent to Canberra to face the second-placed Raiders in a qualifying final. They travelled to the nation’s capital without captain Paul Gallen, who was ruled out with a back injury.

Seven minutes into the match, vice-captain Wade Graham was concussed and played no further part in the game. Despite these setbacks, the Sharks would win 16-14 to earn themselves a much-needed but well deserved week off.

Awaiting them in the preliminary final were the reigning premiers, the North Queensland Cowboys, who as mentioned above left the Sharks embarrassed when they won a landslide semi-final match by 39-0 in Townsville last September.

The Sharks managed to reverse that result to end the Cowboys’ premiership defence with a 32-20 victory and in doing so qualify for their first Grand Final since the breakaway 1997 Super League season.

Standing in the way of their maiden premiership were the Melbourne Storm, who had just won the title as recently as 2012. It was the Sharks, though, who entered the decider as the more experienced team.

Providing the bulk of that experience was captain Paul Gallen, who had played 278 NRL games before reaching his first career Grand Final, as well as previous premiership players Luke Lewis and Chris Heighington, who featured in the Panthers and Wests Tigers sides that saluted in 2003 and 2005 respectively.

Matt Prior and James Maloney were also part of the Dragons and Roosters sides that won in 2010 and 2013 respectively.

This now leads us to the grand final, in which the Sharks started outsiders against the Storm, who under the leadership of Cameron Smith were seeking their third legitimate premiership.

The Sharks started ferociously, and after an early penalty goal, Ben Barba scored from a scrum play to give the Sharks an 8-0 lead. The scoreline remained that way until half-time, despite the Sharks having several more opportunities to increase its lead.

As expected, the Storm would work their way into the match, with Jesse Bromwich pegging a try back ten minutes into the second half and then Will Chambers scoring soon after to give the Storm a 12-8 lead.

But the Sharks were not to be denied, and with ten minutes remaining Andrew Fifita would score right under the posts to give the Sharks back the lead, 14-12.

What ensued would be a tense final ten minutes as the match went down to the wire, as it did last year when the Cowboys beat the Broncos 17-16 in the first – and very likely only – Grand Final to be decided in golden point extra time.

With two minutes remaining, the Storm blew their chance when Chambers failed to find an unmarked Cooper Cronk to his left. Had the joint-Dally M Medallist gathered the ball and scored, the Storm would’ve been left celebrating their third premiership.

Instead, the Sharks held on to win 14-12 and finally reward their long-suffering fans with the premiership they had craved for half a century, burying the demons of the ASADA scandal which left the club in ruins at the end of 2014.

Their victory continued a small trend whereby a club came back from its lowest ebb to claim the ultimate prize.

In 2002, the Bulldogs were certain to win the premiership before the exposure of salary cap breaches late that season saw the club stripped of 37 competition points and sent from first to last in one hit.

Two years later, with largely the same playing roster from 2002 which also included a very young Johnathan Thurston, they were premiers.

In 2010, the Melbourne Storm’s successes between 2006 and 2009 were revealed to be a fraud, and the club was stripped of two premierships, three minor premierships and condemned to finish that season tied to last place.

Two years later, with their skeleton of Billy Slater, Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk still intact, they were premiers.

And in 2014, the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, without suspended coach Shane Flanagan, suffered through a season of embarrassment as the ASADA scandal took its toll on the club and saw them finish last on the ladder with five wins.

Two years later, and the Sharks, after half a century of existence and more failures, scandals and controversies than on-field highlights, are finally premiers.

Though the Storm were disappointed to have lost the biggest match of the season for the first time since 2008, they should take light from the fact they did everything they could to win the match despite playing rather poorly in the first half.

Will Chambers’ failure to find Cooper Cronk with the tryline open in the dying minutes will forever haunt the Queensland centre, and Storm fans will be pondering what could have been in the long off-season that lies ahead.

Captain Cameron Smith was also gracious in his post-match speech, which drew applause and respect from the ANZ Stadium crowd, almost all of whom were clearly behind the Sharks in their bid to win their first premiership.

It was a far cry from the disrespect he, being the incumbent Queensland captain and therefore public enemy number one in Sydney, would normally cop among the NSW fans during State of Origin time.

To finish off, congratulations to the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, who quite fittingly have managed to break through for their maiden premiership in their 50th year in the competition.

Having had to wait this long for the ultimate glory, lifelong Sharks fans will be hoping that it doesn’t take them another half a century to win their second.

And after nearly that long, the porch light can finally be switched off, as the premiership trophy heads towards the Shire for the very first time.

Their win leaves only the New Zealand Warriors and Gold Coast Titans with empty trophy cabinets, and leaves the Parramatta Eels with the NRL’s longest premiership drought, having not saluted since 1986.

More importantly, commiserations to the Melbourne Storm, who have again proven their detractors wrong to finish as minor premiers for the second time and qualify for the grand final for the seventh time.

And that’s all she wrote for season 2016. May a joyous off-season beckon for the premiers, the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, and for the other 15 clubs, well, their mission to knock them off the premiership perch has now begun in earnest.