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Cronulla will begin their attempt to turn PointsBet Stadium into “a fortress” with a renewed emphasis on defence and the manner in which they start games.
In Round 1, they went down 24-19 in Canberra and were somewhat caught in the headlights of a Raiders side celebrating talisman Jack Wighton’s 200th game and paying tribute to late club legend Peter Mulholland.
Now, the shoe is on the other foot as Cronulla celebrate their own milestones, with the return to the Sutherland Shire after two years in exile in Kogarah, as well as the first regular-season game coached by Craig Fitzgibbon – once a ballboy at Shark Park when his father Allan coached the side in the 1980s and 1990s – who missed last week due to COVID isolation.
Fitzgibbon was not overly emotional about his own homecoming, but was quick to emphasise the importance of the advantage of the team being back at Shark Park and the need to improve on their slow start last time out.
“If you could you’d play all 24 games at home,” he said. “We’re excited. For the club who haven’t been here for the last two years, it’s exciting.”
“We really enjoyed the trial match against the Bulldogs here at PointsBet. There’s plenty of our plenty of reasons to play, but none more so than just to improve on our performance for last week.
“It’s a long year and we just need to improve on what we started. We want to play here and we’re excited to be here. If we can make that some sort of a fortress that would be our ideal for us.
“The excitement in the area and the team is palpable at the moment. We’ll make sure we acknowledge that and make sure we play a style of footy that everyone wants to see.”
Fitzgibbon is fresh out of the Roosters system, where he was seen as the brains behind the defence that led the club to back-to-back premierships in 2018 and 2019.
He broke down last week’s tackling issues – 44 misses – as a problem based around lack of momentum on the back of a poor start to the game.
“Your energy gets set by how you start, and we started behind the eight ball and on the tryline,” explained the Sharkies coach.
“Our defensive principles were a little bit out of whack there. You tend to bounce off tackles in those scenarios.
“We’ll work hard on how we defend and make sure that we’re in better positions – usually if you’re in the better positions, you make better tackles.
“We worked hard on our defence in pre-season and worked hard on it this week, so I’m expecting a better response this week.
“It’s very difficult without the ball and without mounting any pressure as well. It’s quite stop-start – and our stops and starts were starting another defensive set.”
Star recruit Nicho Hynes was on the receiving end of a lot of last week’s punishment. It was his first experience in a non-dominant side and is not used to defending in the front line, having previously featured mainly in the fullback role in a Melbourne Storm team that rarely lost the forward battle.
“It’s all the defence really,” said Hynes of the transition from the Storm system to the Sharks. “I made 19 or 20 tackles (last week) and I didn’t make that in 10 weeks last year. It’s getting used to defending week in week out with some big boys running at you.
“The attack will always come. I’ve always been an attacking player so if I just keep working on my defence and then the rest will come.”
“We’ve got a new coach and some new players in the team so combinations are going to come. It might take a couple of weeks and we’d like to get a couple of wins in that time.”
“I might get fewer opportunities than I would at the Storm, possibly, but it’s just up to me to take those when I have them and nail them when they arise.”
Hynes has played under two coaches at either end of the experience spectrum: Craig Bellamy, who had his 500th game as head coach against Souths on Thursday night, and Fitzgibbon, on his second outing in the top job, and first in-person.
“I’ve always said that I find Fitz and Belzo (Craig Bellamy) to be quite similar,” said Hynes. “It’s a bit harsh to draw comparisons to each other because Bellamy has coached 500 and Fitz is on his second, but they’re both very defensively orientated.
“They both back my ability and my strengths and they just want me to play to my strengths. Fitzy gives me a lot of confidence, and the coach backing me gives me the confidence to go out and do what I do.”
Despite the loss last week in Canberra, Fitzgibbon was broadly happy with the performance, especially the manner in which his team fought back from an 18-6 deficit at the break.
“They played really well and it’s always difficult to go to Canberra and play,” he said. “We started to feel their way to the game a little bit, started to get a little bit of possession back and get off our goal line and mount a few sets.
“I thought in the second half we performed a lot better and we’ll take the positives out of that second half. We just need to start better.
“It’s really difficult to win any game, irrespective of the circumstances, without possession and without a half-decent completion rate, and they’re probably the two key stats that I thought we missed the kick on.”
“That put us into a difficult scenario in the first half there, basically bunkered on our tryline defending.”
“We took a confidence hit to start the game, but again I was really proud of the way the guys responded at half-time.”
“It could have been anything after that first half so I was really proud of the way that they got back together at halftime, to come back out, start the game again and made a contest of it right up until the death.”
“I was proud of the guys in the second half – it was a big tide to turn around. Momentum can be hard to shift and I was really happy with the way that they got together and got back to how we prepared.”
Parramatta, who travel to Cronulla on Saturday afternoon, are on the back of a win over the Titans, albeit on in which they did not always look convincing.
“It’ll be important not to look too much into last week at this stage,” said Fitzgibbon of his Round 2 opponents. “In the first of six or eight weeks, there’ll be some yo-yoing between performances, momentum and momentum shifts during the game.
“I know enough about Parramatta, to know that they’ll address whatever happened and they won’t happy about last week and come with a steely resolve this week.
“They’ll improve on last week’s performance, and so will we. Where that lands us we’ll find out at 5.30. I’m really excited for that challenge.”
Eels coach Brad Arthur expected Cronulla to bounce back, spurred on by the homecoming crowd.
“I thought they were brave,” he said of their loss to the Raiders. “It’s hard to go down to Canberra, and perhaps they got jumped a bit at the start, but they finished very strong and took the game down to the wire.
“We know that they’re returning to Shark Park after two years and it’s the coach’s first opportunity to put his stamp on it in a competition game.
“They move the ball well and have plenty of pace out wide, and their forwards are nice and powerful through the middle. We’re definitely preparing ourselves for a tough game.”
Arthur was impressed with the Eels’ improvement as their game went on, despite scoring five tries in the first half and none in the second.
“In our first half we scored a few tries but got dragged into a bit of touch footy. We were uncharacteristic in terms of how we want to look and play,” he said.
“We made some red zone errors that were detail errors, and we don’t usually do that. We need to make sure our detail is good.
“When your detail is good, you’re willing to play a tough, grinding style of footy. In the second half, we completed 17 or 18 from 20 and had good field position.
“We got across the line a few times but didn’t get the ball down, but that was more like what I want to see from our team.”
“(Winning tight games) was what we focused on last year, because even at times last year when we got put under pressure, the way that we handled it wasn’t great.
“But the other day, we lost a winger and had to move our six out into the centres but we didn’t look out of sorts in terms of structure and combinations. No one got frustrated and we didn’t lose our heads. We stayed calm and relaxed and knew that if we stayed there we’d find a way to win.
“We got a few penalties on the back of pressure so that’s a testament to the group that the level of maturity is starting to come. It’s going to be another level again this week for us.”