There have been plenty of plaudits thrown Cronulla’s way after their effort to win on Sunday while being down to 11 players but it cannot be understated how atrocious the Warriors were in gifting the Sharks victory at PointsBet Stadium.
Serious questions need to be asked about the Warriors in light of their pathetic second-half capitulation when they conceded 17 unanswered points, failed to make a line break against a severely depleted team and played some of the dumbest football imaginable.
Trailing 12-10 at the break, they had 40 minutes against a team which had already lost Will Kennedy to a send-off in the 17th minute and then spent a 10-minute stretch midway through the second half with 11 on the field when Jesse Ramien was sin-binned for another high shot.
Rewatching the footage, it is clear this team lacks direction and tactical nous but also common sense as they continually let the Sharks off the hook despite having them at their mercy.
How not to win an NRL game against 11 men
Breaking down the diabolical display, here’s how the Warriors’ sets unfolded.
Set 1 v 12 players: The set fizzles to nothing with a Shaun Johnson kick ending up with centre Viliami Vailea, who knocks on close to the try line.
Set 2 v 12: Johnson fumbles on play four after an careless Jazz Tevaga pass just over halfway. “This is the sort of football that will keep the Sharks in the game” Fox League commentator Greg Alexander warned. He couldn’t have been more spot on.
Cronulla score in the 46th minute via Connor Tracey after forcing a line drop-out. It’s 16-10 to the home side.
Set 3 v 12: The Warriors get a piggyback penalty out of their own area.
Set 4 v 12: Johnson’s grubber goes to Matt Moylan on the goal line, who gets back into the field of play.
Set 5 v 12: This one finishes with another ineffective Johnson grubber which goes straight to Hynes, who switched to fullback after Kennedy was marched.
In the 54th minute, Ramien gets sin-binned for his hit on Euan Aitken and going on the fluctuating NRL barometer for dealing with high shots, he should have been sent off. “Could there have been harsher action taken?” NRL head of football Graham Annesley mused on Monday.
“Based on the circumstances the bunker and referee were confronted with, there could have. I wouldn’t have been unhappy with (it being a send-off) either, but that was how they saw it at the time.”
The last time a team had two players marched for the rest of the game since Cronulla against Parramatta in 2003 in a match which ended in a club record 74-4 loss.
Based on what happened on Sunday, it’s highly doubtful the Warriors would have won let alone run away with the game if the Sharks played the final 26 minutes with just 11.
Cronulla were clever in soaking up time when Ramien was off, making offloads in attack to prolong play rather than taking a conservative approach which would have meant shorter attacking sets and more work to do in defence.
Set 6 v 11: Dallin Watene-Zelezniak throws a speculative pass which goes astray on play four, retrieved by Sharks prop Andrew Fifita. The Warriors compound the error by giving away a relieving penalty when Matt Lodge foolishly rushes off the line in a clear offside infringement.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Set 7 v 11: A seven-tackle set after Moylan’s kick goes dead, who then concedes a penalty for stripping the ball on a two-on-one tackle.
Set 8 v 11: In perfect attacking position after the penalty kick downfield, they get a set restart after a Sharks infringement.
Set 9 v 11: With everything in their favour and their exhausted opponents gasping for oxygen, they waste the six-again opportunity when Johnson grubbers over the dead-ball line by five metres.
“I can’t believe they’ve released all that pressure with a poor kick from Shaun Johnson,” says a flabbergasted Alexander in commentary. “There’s no way the Sharks defend that line for another set. I don’t think they had it in them. A repeat set would’ve just about killed the Sharks off.”
Set 10 v 11: No real questions thrown at the Cronulla defence, the set ends with a mediocre bomb from Johnson as Ramien returns to the fray. Hynes spots Rocco Berry standing incorrectly at marker, runs straight at him and he takes the bait by committing to a tackle that was always going to be a penalty.
Tracey scores again to make it 22-10 with 13 minutes remaining and this contest is a clear mismatch although it’s the team with fewer players looking like they have the overlap advantage.
With 11 minutes to go Fox League sideline commentator Matt Russell reported that he went to Warriors bench and asked if they were enacting their 18th man replacement player because they could as Aitken failed his HIA from a dismissable offence. He said they told him that they weren’t and after “confusion reigned”, Bayley Sironen ran onto the field.
Set 11 v 12: They run the ball on the last play, seemingly unaware, and interchange forward Jack Murchie, filling in at centre, is tackled in possession 30 metres out from his own line.
The Warriors dodge a bullet when Tracey touches down but the last pass was correctly ruled forward.
Set 12 v 12: Nothing special yet again in the build-up and the set finishes with a Johnson high kick taken on full by Hynes.
With six minutes left, Hynes drills a field goal with Sironen the only Warrior bothering to challenge the kick and the Sharks go out beyond two converted tries to lead 23-10.
Sharks forward Briton Nikora is allowed to stand in a tackle as two nearby Warriors stand still so he offloads to Hynes, who puts Kennedy in for the final nail in the coffin and an astonishing 29-10 scoreline.
Set 13 v 12: This one ends with another high Johnson kick, collected comfortably by Tracey before any chasers get near him.
Set 14 v 12: Summing up the second half perfectly, a poor pass to Daejarn Asi is fumbled around his ankles and that’s the last the Warriors see of the ball.
Nathan Brown (Tony Feder/Getty Images)
The post-mortem
Warriors coach Nathan Brown said in the post-match media conference that the numerical advantage was not going to automatically mean they would get on top because of the spirit his counterpart Craig Fitzgibbon had instilled in the Sharks this year.
He laid much of the blame for the loss on his right edge and said their attack needed to be better but added he couldn’t fault his team’s effort.
Even if the team’s effort was up to scratch, to lose against a side that has had two players banished is inexcusable and alarm bells should be ringing after two insipid performances in the space of three weeks, following on from the 70-10 humiliation in Melbourne on Anzac Day.
Phil Gould, who was the club’s general manager up until last year, said on 100% Footy on Monday night that the Shark Park massacre was a worse performance than the Storm flogging.
“The last try was insulting, it was terrible,” he said. “They’re not like that, those Warriors boys. They’re great kids and they’re competitive and they try hard. I just can’t explain what happened to them in that second half yesterday and why the pressure of that situation got to them. It never got to the Sharks, it got to them.
“It was a terrible performance.”
Front-rower Addin Fonua-Blake has been deputising as captain while Tohu Harris has been working his way back to full fitness from his ACL tear last year. Harris is back in full contact training hoping to be back on the field soon and he will provide genuine leadership, but there’s only so much he can do to make this rabble respectable.
The Warriors have had a few injury concerns and back-up half Ash Taylor was forced into retirement, leading them to sign young Cowboys five-eighth Daejarn Asi recently for the rest of the season.
William Kennedy tackles Reece Walsh high. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
They added Roosters lower-grade duo Ronald Volkman and Freddy Lussick on Monday after releasing Kodi Nikorima, who will take them on this Saturday when he lines up for his new club South Sydney at Magic Round. The arrival of Manly veteran Dylan Walker and Knights forward Mitch Barnett next year – two players with chequered history – will do little to fix the Warriors’ discipline problems.
At least rising star Reece Walsh, who is contracted until the end of next season, has shot down talk of him leaving early but you get the feeling he’s in a marriage of convenience at the moment because the Warriors were willing to hand him an accelerated entry into the big time. Kind of like when Shane Watson played first-class cricket for Tasmania for a few years before heading back to Queensland.
It’s been a tough few years with the COVID-enforced relocation to Australia away from their Auckland base and their homecoming match at Mt Smart Stadium – their first at the venue since 2019 – is less than two months away against the Wests Tigers on July 3.
At 4-5 and sitting in 10th place on the ladder, all is not lost – they actually went up a spot on the weekend on for and against because St George Illawarra lost by a bigger margin to Melbourne.
But all signs point to this being yet another season of the Warriors being hot and cold with players coming in and out of the team and the club, as has been the case for several years.
Based on Sunday’s turn of events, they look like heading home in the same old state of disarray.
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