Cronulla coach Shane Flanagan admits the return of skipper Paul Gallen and Jeremy Smith can’t come soon enough after the freefalling Sharks blew a shot at the NRL top four with a 36-4 home thumping at the hands of Canberra.
The Raiders were at their Jekyll and Hyde best as they put on a show at Toyota Stadium, coach David Furner joking his players needed to be swabbed following a preceding fortnight in which they beat Melbourne before stumbling at home against Gold Coast.
Canberra are now one of five teams on 20 competition points just one win outside eighth spot, while the Sharks could drop to sixth if North Queensland win on Monday night, having failed to come up with a win from their past three games – all against teams outside the eight.
That run coincided with the absence of injured duo Gallen (abdominal strain) and Smith (knee) – whose presence was sorely missed as Canberra ran up 24 unanswered points in the opening half hour.
“Jeremy and Paul coming back next week … I’ll be glad to name them in the team sheet, I tell you,” Flanagan said.
“I think at some of those stages, especially after two tries, we probably needed someone like Gal or Jeremy to get the team together.
“Take your two best players out of any side and you’re going to struggle – not like we should’ve today – but we’re going to struggle.”
The representative pair would have definitely added some starch to a Sharks defence that offered little resistance as Josh McCrone totally outshone opposite number Todd Carney with some spectacular ball-playing.
After Sam Williams crossed just for minutes in, McCrone kicked for the first of Jarrod Croker’s double, put Josh Papalli through a gap to score before he again combined with Papalii to have former Shark Blake Ferguson over for a 24-0 lead after 31 minutes.
Home fans were stunned but hadn’t lost their sense of humour.
“Lucky Lewis signed on Friday, he wouldn’t be signing now” yelled one wag in the crowd in reference to last week’s recruitment of international back-rower Luke Lewis for 2013.
Furner, too, was in the mood for jokes as he pondered the frustrations of coaching a side who can go from brilliant to atrocious and back again in the space of a few weeks.
“I think one of my assistants put it well – if they were horses you’d swab them,” Furner said of his men.
“We needed to start well, I thought that was where we let ourselves down last week and it was a massive focus.”
After Mark Taufua scored Cronulla’s only try just before the break, the Raiders took some time to put the Sharks away.
They were denied what appeared a fair try to Reece Robinson for a supposed Josh Dugan forward pass, before Dugan – returning after three weeks out with an ankle injury – scampered away for a 95 metre intercept to ice the game.
