Smart Signings: Cronulla excelled last year but need to move key man on to win come finals time

Craig Fitzgibbon’s first year in charge at Cronulla was, by pretty much any standards, an overwhelming success.

The Sharks jumped from ninth to second, all while integrating a new playing style, based around a new halfback, Nicho Hynes, who himself went on to win the Dally M Medal. It was pretty good going, even if it all ended in tears with two consecutive losses in the finals.

What was all the more remarkable was that Cronulla achieved such massive gains while playing a quite unique style of football that was, when it was good, incredibly easy on the eye.

Fitzgibbon was reared in the Trent Robinson coaching hothouse at the Roosters and it showed: his side bore more than a little resemblance to the 2018 and 2019 Premiership winning teams, with an expansive style based around strong backline metres and regular shifts to their excellent wingers and centres.

The forwards were really unlike anyone else in the NRL: they were largely small-ball, with a lot of deception. Their best forward in terms of metres was Toby Rudolf, only worth 135^th in the NRL and not in the top 30 among props, but they had four of the top ten in decoy runs.

I covered Cronulla’s interest in deception in great depth midway through last year, so read all about it.

Their playing style fell somewhere between the Panthers’ backline metre machine tactic – that was plays one and two for the Sharks, too – and the willingness to play with abandon that was seen from Souths and, when it worked, the Roosters.

That’s a good thing, because the yardage production has to come from somewhere and, increasingly, it’s better if that is from the backs rather than the forwards. The Sharks were good in 2022, and sustainably so.

Now come the caveats. When you’re discussing the 2022 Sharkies, there is a massive elephant in the room that has to be mentioned: the draw.

The Sharks had one of the easiest of the year, facing teams that finished in the top 8 nine times in the regular season – Manly, the Dragons and the Broncos all played finals teams 13 times – and Souths, Parramatta and Penrith only once.

Their record against other finals teams was a creditable 4-5, though again, one has to factor in that Cronulla played Melbourne and the Cowboys in the middle of Origin, where they had one player participating and their opponents had far more.

Their other two wins against good opposition were Round 2, where they defeated Parramatta after the siren, and Round 20, where they downed Souths in Golden Point.

(Photo by Jason McCawley/Getty Images)

In a league with such a disparity between good and bad, there’s a lot to be said for handily taking care of the bad teams, but to win a comp, you have to beat the best in the finals. Cronulla were bounced out in straight sets.

The good news is that, this year at least, they’ll get another crack at it, because their draw is again quite soft. They play ten times against last year’s top 8 and get the short turnaround just once.

The Sharks’ issue, then, might be the same as last year: what do they do when the whips get cracking? I’ve no doubt that they will make the finals, and probably the top four again, given the likelihood of improve on 2022 and the similar schedule.

On a signings level, it’s very quiet so far. Aiden Tolman and Andrew Fifita have both retired, with Oregon Kaufusi brought in to plug that gap in the bench rotation and one of Jesse Colquhoun and Tom Hazleton likely to get more minutes to compensate.

Newtown, their feeder club, finished as Minor Premiers in the NSW Cup and have a raft of young talent that might feed through, with Kayal Iro – player of the year in second grade – and Kade Dykes already debuting last year and Mawene Hiroti and Matt Ikuvalu more than capable stand-ins.

There’s also Jayden Berrell, who cannot be far from an NRL debut as a back-up hooker to Blayke Brailey, and Lachlan Miller, the Aussie 7s star, though he seems on the brink of joining Newcastle.

On a squad front, there’s little that one could do to improve. What Cronulla lack is a lot bigger and might be more challenging to fix without major decisions being taken.

Their attack, to me at least, was based around a pretty unusual spine dynamic that saw Matt Moylan and Nicho Hynes fulfil quite similar roles in the team despite ostensibly playing different positions. It was like they played two five-eighths at times.

Hynes was doing all the usual halfback stuff in terms of kicking and creating, but also presented far more of a running threat than his five-eighth. There’s an argument in there that a Hynes should just play as a pivot from now on, though that’s probably for the birds given that he just won the Dally M playing there.

Moylan, now 31, completed his first full season since 2018, and it was hard to say that he was bad: just that they probably need someone a lot better to take it to the next level, and it might be that Cronulla could accommodate a different style of five eighth to offer a point of difference that would help them in their toughest games.

One thinks back to the win over Souths in R21 and the loss to the Cowboys in the first week of the finals as two of Moylan’s weakest last year: no try or line break assists in either and little running threat.

The good news is that Cronulla have an in-house replacement ready to go, with Braydon Trindall waiting in reggies.

His attacking stats are actually very similar to Moylan’s when equated for playing time, and that was with the disadvantage of coming off the bench and not being a regular player. He also profiles more closely with a halfback – where he played in NSW Cup – in terms of kicking and organising.

Even if one was listed as 7 and the other as 6, having someone who can organise and kick like Trindall can would certainly help Hynes more.

It’s unlikely that Trindall, who is clearly too good for second grade, will wait around too long if he doesn’t get a crack soon enough. Fitzgibbon might want to see his own back-up go before dipping in the market for another.

Should he look elsewhere, there is definitely value to be found. Adam Doueihi is available to chat to now and would represent a different style of five eighth to what Moylan is. His 2022 stats, equalised for possession, destroy Moylan’s, and that’s while playing in the worst team in the league.

If you’ve been reading these columns for a while, you can probably predict the next option: Super League’s best young player, Jack Welsby.

The St Helens playmaker is far too good to stay in the UK for his whole career and is currently bullying the competition, averaging twice as many try assists, twice as many line break assists, more runs for more metres and much more kicking too.

Of course, those stats all happened in Super League, but I’ll counter that by pointing to his World Cup performances and the fact that he is still 21, has already played 80+ games of first grade, played rep footy and won three comps.

There might be a Super League tax when looking a stats, but even if Welsby was 30% worse than his current numbers, he would still outperform Matt Moylan. Oh, and he also plays halfback and fullback, so given that Will Kennedy is also off-contract for next year, it’s double the reason to be interested.

Welsby has a contract until 2025 but this is rugby league and contracts are there to be broken. Make the call, Sharkies.