Sharks coach Craig Fitzgibbon hailed his side’s display against the Dragons as the “performance that was needed” after disappointing losses to the Roosters and Warriors.
Cronulla were desperate to bounce back, having handed an understaffed Tricolours outfit a 42-16 win in Round 12 before they were flogged by New Zealand 40-10 in their last outing.
However, the Sharks were once again staring down the barrel of defeat when they went into the break trailing 18-6 to a Red V side missing a host of star players.
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But for Fitzgibbon, he was confident Cronulla could fight their way back into the contest, going on to score four tries in a 26-minute window.
“You might think I’m mad when I say this, but I didn’t think we were going too bad in the first half. There’s parts of our play that we wanted to display tonight,” Fitzgibbon said in his post-match press conference.
“Take the scoreline out of it, we weren’t searching for a scoreline. We were searching for some things we were looking at.
“Obviously it stings a bit when the scoreline says 18-6 for sure, but we were really clear on not getting away from what we thought we wanted to do tonight.
“It’s really simple, we just kept doing it and it worked. That was the most pleasing bit I think.”
Fitzgibbon was also quick to silence questions surrounding the Sharks’ premiership hopes, with a crucial Round 15 win keeping them firmly in the top eight.
“It’s too big a picture to look at, I can’t see it,” Fitzgibbon said.
“We are where we are at, we haven’t performed for a couple of weeks. Even a result today was irrelevant, it was a performance that was needed.
“We needed to see what we want to be, what we want to do. Take an outcome out of the way, we need to play like the Sharks wanted to play. That was the most important thing.
“From where we’ve been, where we’re at… I don’t think we can play anything than what’s in front of us at the moment.
“I just reckon we look at too much for too long, for us, for where we are at we just have to go Broncos and Broncos only. Not the season.
“Nothing else other than what is in front of us. Obviously their performance last week would suggest they’ve turned a corner, so there’s a challenge for us right there.”
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The Sharks coach went on to praise the Dragons’ fight, missing players like Valentine Holmes who is on Origin duties.
Meanwhile, Jaydn Su’A, Christian Tuipulotu, Dylan Egan, Ryan Couchman among others are all sidelined due to injury.
“To be fair the Dragons are missing a few players, and I thought they turned up. That was a hard contest tonight,” Fitzgibbon said.
“Take the second half out of it, that was more difficult then it looked. That’s why at half time I wasn’t too concerned.
“I thought that was a really hard half but we were going alright. Score line probably didn’t suggest it… then the second half it was the same.
“But we just got in control of those kicks, kept it simple and it worked well.”
