Rival captain Johnathan Thurston declared Paul Gallen a contender for best player in rugby league after another match-winning performance by the prop.
NSW captain Gallen capped an inspired performance by spinning out of tackles to score the deciding try eight minutes from time as he led Cronulla to a 20-14 win over Thurston’s North Queensland.
Despite feeling ill, Gallen played the full 80 minutes, making a staggering 248 metres from 25 runs as well as 11 tackle breaks and 35 tackles at Dairy Farmers Stadium on Saturday as his team backed up their Monday night win over premiers Manly.
Thurston – widely considered the world’s best player – said Gallen’s numbers were phenomenal.
“He’s a machine. He’s an animal, isn’t he?” Thurston said.
“He’s probably one of the best in the game, if not the best.”
Gallen has shifted to prop while regular forward Bryce Gibbs battles injury and Cronulla coach Shane Flanagan said his try was just reward for wonderful effort.
With Gallen in such form and his team inspired by his leadership, the Sharks are looking an early chance to return to finals football for the first time in four years.
But Gallen certainly isn’t looking that far ahead and warned they were too dependent on some heroic tryline defence against the Cowboys.
“It’s too hard to defend that way every week,” Gallen said.
“If we keep playing like that, games will get away from us.
“But if we learn to complete better and control the ball out of our end, there’s no reason we can’t keep competing.
“But we’re not really thinking about winning games at the moment. It’s all about getting the little things right.”
Flanagan said there were encouraging signs from his team, who were starting to show some character at both ends of the park.
He said two tries in the final two minutes of the first half and Gallen’s late decider proved the team was starting to believe they could score points.
“There’s a little bit of belief starting to build in the squad and I’m happy about that,” he said.
“There was a real lot of character there. I said to my assistant Peter Sharp that we can’t hold on here, we’ve defended our 20m line too much and we did and that’s what got us it in the end.”
Cronulla have found themselves towards the bottom of the ladder in recent years, finishing 13th in 2011, and Flanagan said that unlike previous seasons things were coming together in recent weeks.
“There are lots of things working for us at the moment,” he said.
“We’re defending our tryline, we’ve got a bit of belief and courage, were turning up for each other and its all happening at the moment and it can only get better.”
