Cronulla survived a second half scare to get over Manly 34-22 after a performances for the ages from Siosifa Talakai.
The Sharks needed all the wiggle room they could get, with Manly coming on strong after the break to make a contest of it in the rain at PointsBet Stadium.
The game looked dead and buried at half time after one of the great individual showings, with Talakai running riot over Manly counterpart Morgan Harper in a show of dominance that forced Des Hasler to hook his man at the break.
It’s hard to overstate how dangerous Talakai looked whenever he had the ball, and how terrified Harper looked in attempting to deal with him.
The stats can tell you one thing – and 193m, nine tackle breaks, two tries and three try assists in the first half alone will do that – but the feel of Shark Park every time the centre touched the football was something else.
But for all the dominance, Craig Fitzgibbon will rage about the manner with which his side ceded control and invited the Sea Eagles back in.
The hosts barely emerged from the sheds after the break, losing all momentum. A combination of a better Manly side and a hefty rainfall induced the completion rate to drop to what Fitzgibbon will consider unacceptable levels.
Manly dropped the kick off, and if there was ever an omen, this was it.
Within seconds, the big trend of the evening had been set, with Talakai waltzing around Morgan Harper to get Cronulla on the board.
In the 14th minute, it happened again, though this time Talakai went straight over the top of his counterpart. Five minutes later, it happened a third time, though on that occasion Harper was strong enough to stop the Sharks centre, albeit only enough that he had to pass to Ronaldo Mulitalo to get the try.
It might have been worse. Between the first two Talakai tries, Jess Ramien broke down the right and kicked for Will Kennedy, who fumbled the ball with the line begging. In a normal game, it would go down as one of the bombs of the season, but in this, it was a footnote.
Before the break, there was another: Talakai simply choosing to draw and pass to put Mulitalo over again.
The Manly right edge defence, which had faced up to the Sharks early on, was sticking up the white flag in the face of the onslaught.
It was barely believable. Talakai again broke down the right – Harper wasn’t bothering to tackle him anymore – and kicked through. This time, Kennedy did pick up and score.
In the commotion, there was still space for this to get worse for the Sea Eagles. Haumole Olakau’ata was sin-binned for a high shot on Aidan Tolman.
On the stroke of halftime, the crowning glory came with a try to Teig Wilton: Harper marked Talakai so tightly that he totally ignored the man inside, who went over untouched.
It was all she wrote for Morgan Harper – and might be for a while in first grade – but it wasn’t for Manly.
Cronulla’s intensity dropped and the Sea Eagles managed to get some much-needed momentum. Christian Tuipolotu, then Taniela Paseka were served up soft defending and cashed in, before Lachlan Croker burrowed his way over.
With 15 to play, Haumole Olakau’atu found the perfect line and suddenly, the difference was just ten points. There were late chances – Andrew Davey dropped one with the line begging – but the deficit proved too much to overcome.
With two minutes on the clock, Nicho Hynes took a penalty goal to move it to a two converted try margin, but