Michael Ennis has revealed the relationship behind one of the most famous tries in Grand Final history, Andrew Fifita’s matchwinning effort for Cronulla against Melbourne in 2016.
Speaking on James Graham’s The Bye Round podcast, the former Sharks hooker said that the move for the try that turned a 12-8 deficit into a 14-12 lead with just ten minutes to play, helping Cronulla claim their inaugural Premiership.
“People always talk to me, especially around Cronulla way, about that moment with Fifita,” said Ennis. “We’d practiced that. We’d practiced it thousands of times.
“I spoke to him when Will Chambers scored and we were talking about how he had to get back into the game. Very rarely when Melbourne go in front do they get run down, particularly in that era with the blokes that they had in their team.
“I knew Andrew was important to me and we spoke about how we had gone away from what we had set out to do that night, which was to go through them.
“We led 8-0 and should have led by more at half time, but we’d started to look for that final try, that cheap try. We’d started to try to go around them to look for cheap points to ice it. To their credit, they came back.
“I knew that if we were going to go through them, it was going to be Andrew. Matt Prior and Paul Gallen were pivotal but Andrew was a guy that I could trust catching in collision. As a dummy half, that’s really important.
“When you work so hard to get to that position, particularly in Grand Finals, if you turn over cheap ball you might not get another chance, so you have to nail that moment.
“I saw Munster in the line. He was the fullback in the line, and he was young at that stage. I knew Andrew was big, athletic and in the prime of his career, so I looked up, gave him a nod and I knew I was coming to him.
“He made very few errors in collision, so I could go deep into the line without any fear that he was going to make an error. I reckon I only had a handful of guys in my career that I could do that with.”
Ennis spoke about the hours and hours that he and Fifita had spent together to get to the point where they could deliver that moment.
“Andrew and I shared an incredible relationship,” he said. “He’s a larrikin, he’s loud, he’s lots of fun but underneath under the boisterousness is an incredible footy brain.
“At the back end of training sessions, we would walk around different parts of the field talking about how I could use him, how he liked to get the ball off me.
“And in the biggest moment of my career, when I looked up and seen him there, it all came together. Those relationships form on the field and off it.
“You tend to build relationships with the big blokes through the middle as a dummy half.”
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