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Nicho Hynes was supposedly a bit fragile after his Origin debut, according to Phil Gould. The Sharks half had the last laugh on Sunday afternoon with Cronulla taking Gould’s Bulldogs to the cleaners in a 48-10 thumping.
Hynes was agile, Canterbury’s defence nothing but fragile.
Gould was there in his guise as Channel Nine commentator and the Canterbury general manager was bemused on several occasions as his team dished up dopey errors.
For Hynes there is of course a world of difference between taking on the bumbling Bulldogs as opposed to the marauding Maroons but at least he bounced back after a below-par performance seven days prior in Cronulla’s 54-10 shellacking from the Storm.
After two losses on the trot, Craig Fitzgibbon’s side is back up to an 8-6 record and fifth spot on the ladder but it will take much more than a cakewalk against Canterbury to prove they are legitimate title contenders.
Nicho Hynes. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
On his 27th birthday, Hynes started the match nervously after his controversial dumping from the NSW team, kicking a bomb out on the full and dishing up a forward pass.
But he rebounded as the ball did likewise off his knees, picking it up to run 90 metres only to be denied by a Jake Averillo try-saving tackle. But the Sharks posted first points on the next play when Teig Wilton surged through the scrambled defence.
“It’s been a bit of a challenging week but I’ve tried to block out all the news and worry about controlling what I can control and that’s what I tried to do today,” he told Fox League.
“Last week we took it personal because the Storm forward pack rolled through us a fair bit and had a lot of offloads. We really wanted to stand up today.”
Fitzgibbon said Hynes “got the balance right” in his game.
“You want your playmakers to make plays but he’s also responsible for us getting into the style of footy we want to play, not shooting ourselves in the foot with high-risk stuff,” he said. “I thought he tackled strong and ran the ball a lot.”
The second-year coach was pleased with his team’s response after their Melbourne mauling and that they “earned the right to play better footy”.
After Hynes’ early efforts set up Wilton drawing first blood, front-rower Braden Hamlin-Uele and winger Ronaldo Mulitalo touched down as the home side stretched out to an 18-0 lead.
Kyle Flanagan, recalled to halfback for the first time in two months to cap off a week of redemption stories for the family, touched down to reduce the deficit to 14 but Cameron McInnes and Jack Williams touched down to make it 30-4 at half-time.
If Canterbury fans expected their team to show some fight in the second stanza, they were sadly mistaken.
Rookie prop Tom Hazelton sparked raucous celebrations when he registered his first try in the NRL, Briton Nikora touched down in his 100th game and when Jesse Ramien joined the rout, it was 48-4 at the mid-point of the second half.
At one point after his team had managed to take the ball no further than five metres from their goal line after three plays, Dogs captain Reed Mahoney hoofed the Steeden downfield to try to get his team out of trouble.
A Kurtis Morrin barge-over try late in the contest made the final scoreline slightly less embarrassing.
Slightly.
Fragile is the term du jour but whichever way you describe it, Canterbury’s defence was paper thin.
Flimsy, flimsy, frail or another word starting with F would also be accurate descriptions.
They had their line broken 10 times in the first hour of play before the Sharks took their foot off the accelerator in the closing stages.
Dogs fans are suffering deja vu with the Cameron Ciraldo era so far unfolding very similar to the Trent Barrett and Dean Pay iterations following the Des Hasler experience of front-end gain followed by back-end pain.
Canterbury have been banged up this year due to injuries with Viliame Kikau, Josh Addo-Carr, Luke Thompson and Bailey Biondi-Odo spending large chunks of the season in the casualty ward and losing Matt Burton to NSW 18th man duty was a body blow heading into Sunday’s trip to Cronulla.
But even after their umpteenth roster overhaul, the results are not turning around.
“We’re not having much go right for us at the moment,” said Ciraldo, surprisingly not too downcast in the post-match media conference. “I was happy with the way we finished. It was ugly enough but it could have got uglier in the last 10-15 minutes. I liked how we didn’t give up.”
He added that the previous hour they made too many errors. “It’s all around the fundamentals, the basics of the game. You sort of expect that with young guys, going through those periods. But it doesn’t make it any easier.
“How much they’re hurting in there, makes me realise we’re on the right track.”
They are mired in 15th spot with just five wins from 15 starts after conceding the most points in the NRL, earning the unwanted honour on Sunday of becoming the first team to let in 400 for the year, up to 407, well clear of the next worst, North Queensland on 374.
“They’ve been out-competed in a number of areas, and that’s really disappointing,” former Bulldogs captain Micheal Ennis said on Fox League commentary.
The Bulldogs have not sniffed the finals since 2016 and have not finished any better than 11th.
And that drought won’t end this year. They’ll be hard pressed to avoid the wooden spoon at this rate.