Catching Up For Coffee With Kieran About Cronulla

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[00:03:11] Welcome to catching up with Kieran over coffee about Cronulla or catching up for coffee with Kieran about Cronulla. This is SharkCast pod of course. My name is Sam Shenazio from 2015 supporting the team a lot longer shivering away over here this winter with my good friend Kieran Fraser.

[00:03:29] The show is brought to you by Dyson Logistics, the Royal Maudiot Club in Port Hacking and Jason Hawes of Crips and Crips Real Estate. And we're just going to bring him right on in here. Kieran, good morning. What's that you're wearing?

[00:03:41] So this is a jersey that we wore one time in 2004. So again, it's got the black up top. It's got the blue with the white is and it was a game. I think it was against the Melbourne Storm and they were at once and it's

[00:03:55] never it's never came back again. So one of the listeners, Sharky Sean helped me get my hands on this one. This is kind of one of the grail pieces that I've never been able to find. I think it's popped up once on eBay.

[00:04:06] It may be like the last few years that I've been searching for it. So shout out to him and really appreciate him helping me get my hands on it. Yeah, I think it's Sharks the Sean, not Sharky Sean, but we we know who Sean is.

[00:04:17] He's a great, great Sharks fan. This show comes to you with the Sharks losing four of their last five games. Kieran, we're going to jump straight into reactions, feelings, thoughts, emotions, theories, Sharks losing 15, 14 over time, as they say in the classics, extra time, golden point.

[00:04:39] I'm still rattled from the game. So I don't really know what I'm saying here, but disappointing to say the least. I watched the game back a few times and it's nowhere near as bad as what people are making out result horrendous opportunities missed. Second half absolutely dominated them.

[00:04:56] I thought came back really well. Slow starts are horrendous. Got to stop that. Got to make more of your opportunities. Tell me what's going on in your big brain of yours. Frustration mate. I mean, it's one of those things where there's been a lot of talk

[00:05:14] that they're fixing certain things and those issues keep coming back. Missed opportunities. You know, there was two goals that could have really changed the game. And like when we missed that second goal, we kind of got that feeling that that might actually hurt us down the track.

[00:05:29] The silly penalty to give away when we were leading by two, but there was no need for it. Penalties on fifth tackle miss field goal from, you know, 15 meters out. It was just one of those games where if things were going the right way,

[00:05:46] we wouldn't be in the position. I mean, credit to the dogs. They defended really well. The dogs are a much improved team. So I don't think, you know, you can kind of write them off. They'll probably play finals football this year with the way they're going.

[00:05:55] The way this competition is, it's such a weird situation. I mean, the Dragons are coming what, six or something like that now. Like it's a strange competition this year. So that kind of tells me the competition is open.

[00:06:09] And you know, if we were actually doing better, we should be, you know, thereabouts. But right now we seem to be going backwards at a bit of a rapid pace, which is really frustrating. Yeah. So I think results wise, but obviously going backwards.

[00:06:21] I think performance wise, we're kind of just treading water. I don't know if we're going backwards anymore. We're just in this spot that we can't get out of. And that includes slow starts. It includes not icing games. Let's get to the field goal straightaway because I was under

[00:06:37] the impression for a little while that the pass wasn't crisp, etc. Pass was fine. Sipa Talakai was unbelievable. Our man, the King of Caring Bar, just didn't get the field goal. That's that's the bottom line is our friend Stone Cold says, like,

[00:06:51] that's it. There's no more and we're not here to sink the boot in. We're huge fans of Nico. We'll talk about Nico pros and cons where he's at. But that's we can't hide from that fact that Nico scuffed it to the left.

[00:07:05] We're going to move on. He's going to move on. Things will get better. But yeah, definitely a missed opportunity to ice the game. What are your thoughts on the field? Gomes, I mean, I think it goes back to the first one.

[00:07:18] With Trindle, I mean, the fact that Trindle took that one over Nico, I thought was a little bit, you know, I about raising considering Trindle, what I think has kicked the field goal in the NRL just yet. And Nico, we've seen kick some pretty decent field goals, right?

[00:07:32] I saw some conversation from Gal who was a bit filthy at Sipa saying that he's got to get that tackle, you know, not so close to the tri-line because basically in that scenario, if Sipa gets taken down on the 10, you're creating an extra 10 meters of space for Nico.

[00:07:47] Now, I understand the thought process of get it as close as possible to make it as easy as possible. But it all just looked disjointed and I think the better play might have been to have taken a tackle there and maybe reset ourselves rather than

[00:08:01] trying to force that field goal because the strike was pretty horrendous. So it was for tackle, yeah? It wasn't the last. I don't think it was the last at all. It might have been third or fourth, but yeah, it definitely wasn't the last. Now we love Paul Gellin.

[00:08:13] He's the coach. He's the game. And he's not wrong. Like what he's talking about from a tactic point of view, he's not wrong. You can't bring up that after that run and then kind of you kind of deflecting

[00:08:27] from the fact that the seven should have got the field goal. It's it's got like, yes, yes. If there's more space, there's more time. I get it. But no, it's a no from me. I'm sorry, Gal. Love you. But it's a no.

[00:08:39] Yeah. In the NFL, it's a thing. We know that as NFL fans. It's a thing in the NFL. It's a live action game and in theory, a lot more. You just should be ready for those moments. And you could see on Nicko's face afterwards, the disbelief.

[00:08:57] Yeah. And that kind of broke my heart because it was like, A, how did I miss it? And B, you know, what he was already thinking, what did I do wrong? Like, yeah, just went to the left, bro.

[00:09:06] Like we it's there are other important things we need to talk about like giving away that penalty. The last one that is beyond unacceptable. If fans out there think the miss field goals unacceptable, go back and watch what the number eight did in that moment.

[00:09:27] Will Kennedy is in position. It's a horrendous grubber kick. Will Kennedy is going to pick it up and probably run 10 meters. There's four minutes left in the clock. Maybe Toby Rudolph just grabs the kicker or whoever it was the guy running through for no reason.

[00:09:44] It's a clear penalty. Yeah. And again, I'm not here to say one guy caused this or that. I guess I'm disputing all that. It's a mixture of all of it. But that capped off a really poor game from Toby Rudolph.

[00:09:57] Just if you look at his numbers alone, so forget about the naked eye watch. His numbers, 33 minutes, eight runs, 60 meters, 17 post contact meters of those. Twenty three tackles, two misses, three penalties given away. And all three were just super costly.

[00:10:17] So I don't think all three of that to points, right? I think so. Yeah. And again, it's not one guy, but that one guy there in those moments really caused some damage. So anyone is looking to pull the pin on one guy.

[00:10:33] It's a team effort and they're just two moments that were glaring. That's why I'm kind of not putting a line through the season, Kiran, because in a lot of ways we're super close. Niko misses the field goal by a little bit.

[00:10:48] It wasn't by a lot. It went to the left. He gets it happy days. I think if Toby doesn't give away that penalty, I think we hang on. The dogs aren't doing much because they were two points behind. The danger was maybe a two point field goal,

[00:11:02] which obviously old mate could get from anywhere on the field. But I'm happy to take that chance. First set of the game, our captain, who we love, adore, admire, drops the ball in our own 20. There's some repeat sets and we can see that's the bad start.

[00:11:18] The bad start came from the captain dropping the ball. So it's individual efforts. Go watch that last. Well, go watch a second half. Go watch the extra time. They're playing well as a team. The team is playing well. It's individuals letting him down.

[00:11:33] And that's tough. It's hard to coach. It's hard to stop. It's hard to stop a guy putting his hands out because he's so tired, giving away a penalty. So super disappointing game. Yeah. And I think the frustrating thing is a fan is that

[00:11:49] the Bulldogs didn't really look like they were threatening the Sharks from a defensive standpoint, right? And the Sharks found a way to beat themselves. And they've done that a couple of times this year where they've done a lot of these really bad errors and silly penalties.

[00:12:06] Penalties on the last tackle, that sort of thing that you just going, this is infuriating how we not address this and fix this. And we know they're working on it and we know they're trying to get better at it. But these things seem to keep happening.

[00:12:19] And, you know, I think the Bulldogs defended really well, but I don't think the Bulldogs attacked really well. And, you know, even that try where kick out scores, Toby goes to grab the ball, but then sees Kennedy, who's further away, sliding in and then takes

[00:12:33] it was a way or you're right, it was a trend. And he takes his hands away and shows no urgency towards picking up that ball and then kick out runs past him, picks the ball up and scores. Like those sort of things are just infuriating.

[00:12:46] Yeah. So Toby is trying to do the right thing. But then he makes the look sorry, he's put himself in the right position, but he's made the wrong call. But that try was fluky as and also because of us. That was a great point you made.

[00:12:59] So so they scored one try basically through us. Our two tries were super smart and clever from our edgemen, like just brilliant, brilliant put down from hard tries to get from. Yeah, they were hard to get. They were well earned Katoa with a great put down

[00:13:16] and then Ronaldo with the amazing catch and little kick for Trindle and Trindle really well as well. So it was a tough type game. No doubt. Yeah. But it was ours to win. And at a point, they're going to start regretting these losses.

[00:13:33] The losses are ones mostly that could be largely avoided. We should be sitting nice and high probably first. But we've given up four points in the last two weeks. And if we had those extra four points, we'd be equal 28 through the storm.

[00:13:48] Yeah, throwing a few other losses. Absolutely. I'm not a guy that usually will say that kind of thing, but it's pretty obvious to see that that's what's going on. And you know, if they're not going to start winning soon,

[00:13:59] they're going to start putting that top four spot in jeopardy. And you put that in jeopardy, you put that in jeopardy, man, and you are making up numbers. I don't think we're making up numbers now, but if we drop out of that for the end of the year,

[00:14:10] you make it up numbers. So they need to get it together. And it's like they've got a week they will have a week to turn it around. We've got Titans on Friday, which we'll get to. But that's not going to be there's no more easy games

[00:14:23] like it's an easy, easy run home because we're not playing the storm every week. But there's no easy games. I mean, it's a yeah, it's a congested competition. There's the Titans that, you know, at times have really put in

[00:14:33] the Tigers absolutely tell the sharks up in round, you know, two or three, whatever that was, right? Well, the thing with them is like they were pretty bad yesterday, but the roosters were red hot. But we've seen the Tigers when they turn up

[00:14:45] with all their energy that they're really hard to stop. So that in two weeks time won't be easy. The Derby is what in Wollongong maybe that's not going to be like there's no as well as there's no real easy ones. So that's not a problem.

[00:15:00] Like we've got a good team that can play good footy, but they got to start turning it around. Let's talk about some of the individuals. Let's go back to the King of Caring by Nick Hines. I just noticed he made 32 tackles and no misses. 32 tackles.

[00:15:17] 32 tackles, Kieran is top three most for the sharks. So he was targeted. Well, he did well defensively, absolutely. Against Kick-Out. They pretty much shut him down. Him and Jesse did a good job, but that meant there wasn't a lot of steam to do a lot else.

[00:15:36] He did half the kicks of Trindle for obviously half the meters. So whether that was planned, whether that was circumstance, I'm not sure he needs to start grabbing the game by the hook as well, because I think the more weeks

[00:15:51] that float by where he doesn't sort of take the situation, I'm not talking about field goals. I'm just talking about taking the team and making it his own again. I think that there's just going to be more questions about him

[00:16:02] and his state of mind and all that stuff that we're hearing. It's how's Nick? What's Nick? Nicko, Nicko, Nicko, Nicko, Nicko, Nicko. Look, it's getting out of control. And the thing that disappointed me the most was that

[00:16:14] in one play he could have saved himself from all this crap. He could have asked the game. We've seen him ask games before. There's no disputing. He can do it. Yeah. He's a talented guy. He's, you know, in a regular season, he's top tier.

[00:16:30] So he needs to get back to that top tier. How do you think he does it? Is it just working hard? What what's what's he going to do? Yeah, I mean, I think the Nicko backshing and blame is kind of a lazy narrative,

[00:16:43] but it's the most obvious and easy one there. Right. Yeah. I look at that game and I, yes, he when he missed that goal, I thought that was going to be very costly and it did prove out to be.

[00:16:54] I mean, the first one he missed was on his wrong side. You know, I can kind of call those ones after the Ronaldo try. I thought that he would nail that one. He didn't. Yeah. And then obviously the miss field.

[00:17:04] All right. So these things all feed into it. And the stuff I see online is just ridiculous. And and it's so personal and targeted at him. And then people wonder, you know, why would this guy get, you know, affected by these sort of things?

[00:17:16] But just go and read some of the comments on some of the pages. They say, and, you know, I don't think Nicko does that sort of stuff. And I know he does a lot of work on himself.

[00:17:23] Yeah. But, you know, it's just giving a punchline to a lot of people, right? And, you know, I think the way he gets himself out of this is by, you know, simplifying his game and doing what he did well on the weekend. Like he defended really well.

[00:17:35] They threw kick out at him. And there was plenty of times where he was doing check and releases on kick out and then bringing in kick out, which is super hard because of the size of kick out. And, you know, he defended really well.

[00:17:48] So he's going to go back to his game, look at those positive and say, right, what are the easiest things that I can improve on? And I think the number one thing is he's kicking game and how he combines that with Trendall.

[00:18:01] You know, it's been a little bit disjointed. I think the last four games that we've lost, you know, it's all been with Nicko in the team, right? And I'm not blaming Nicko for that at all. But I think the one thing I've sort of seen is

[00:18:13] a little bit of deflection off to people like Trendall. And I think, you know, maybe it's the case of, all right, well, I'm the man, I'm being paid like the man. I need to step up and I need to try and nail these things

[00:18:24] and work on my defense, work on my kicking game and the other stuff will flow off the back of that. Right? And you know, the combination with Brailey was really good at the start of the year. The combination with Kennedy has been really good in the past.

[00:18:36] We haven't seen a lot of Will Kennedy's attack this year because he's been covering up so much about offense. So I think, yeah, he can definitely pull it out. And I think he will. But he's got to, you know, use these two games before the buy

[00:18:47] and really look to go, OK, how do we kind of address this? Because the noise is going to come every single time we play. And I think if we can get up to some good starts and not play these tight tussles that we're finding ourselves in,

[00:18:59] we can address these things. He needs his forwards to stand up for him as well, because, you know, there was a lot of issues in that game. It's just not just Nicko. Absolutely not. You're not looking for any kind of like try assist or anything like that.

[00:19:11] You just want him to kind of just steady the ship and it'll come. I want the kicking game, right? And so take a step back and look at Mitchell Moses, right? Mitchell Moses has been hammered for a long time for being a choke artist, right?

[00:19:23] And, you know, I am a person that has been very critical of Mitchell Moses. And he's not a player that I would want at my club because of how he carries himself, how I seem to talk to other players.

[00:19:32] You know, if you saw that last try that the Knights scored, he absolutely turns around and sprays, clip, cut this in. And, you know, just how he carries himself, he's not my kind of guy. But he's gone out and he's worked in his game.

[00:19:43] His defense is really picked up and his kicking game has become like, you know, up there when they think clear is for the best in the league, right? And so you can't create a new leg or leg power and get better or that sort of stuff.

[00:19:54] But what he can do is be very focused and committed in the execution of the game plan, right? Kicking the corners, backing the defense and all those little things. I think if we consistently do that stuff and, you know, pin teams down in their end and, you know,

[00:20:09] our big forwards get that momentum, I think all the other stuff will start flowing off, but right, he will start getting those try assists. You know, he's got Nakora next to him, right? That, you know, Nakora will run those lines. He's got Ramiyan as well, Katoa out there.

[00:20:21] There's a lot of guys that will get the points for him. He's just got to put us in the right situations, I think. Interesting to note as well, the play where they got the field goal. So last set of the game, the offloads were flying thick and fast

[00:20:36] and we can we contain them pretty well throughout the game. But in that set, they let them fly and that's how they got down there to a kickable place for Burton. So it comes back to the team, comes back to focus, concentration, energy.

[00:20:53] They're five minute halves, golden point in theory. So well, no, they're five minute halves, I should say. So they had five minutes stint and they got to probably what the third or fourth minute of that and they just couldn't contain the offloads or not.

[00:21:07] Well, you know, I'm not out there. I understand it's hard, but you've got to find a way. And I think that is something that no one's spoken of either the fence in the in in. Well, I mean, it was pretty deflating, I guess, after

[00:21:19] the miss field goal, I get that heads went down. But sorry, you're fighting for the point. You can't put your head down. You've got to just pick yourself up. Burton missed three field goals, two field goals before he kicked one.

[00:21:30] Right. So, you know, he keeps trying, he keeps turning up, you know, and the dogs kept going, it's all right, we'll get there. We'll get to that position. And it doesn't matter if a 40 meters out. We'll try and bang one over from there.

[00:21:39] Right. And that's the mentality we got to have. Wasn't happy with the first one, Trindle. Like he was on. He was on like a further side than where he should have been. Players were all over the shop, gave away a penalty for a guy obstructing,

[00:21:54] which I thought was really harsh. You and I have spoken about the six again for Jesse Ramian towards the end of the game, which was costly. I've gone over that with a fine tooth comb. And if I was coach Fitzgibbon, I'd be calling up

[00:22:08] the referee's boss and saying what the hell was that because to my estimation, it's around a two second tackle. He's holding him down for two seconds in the world of rugby league. Two seconds is fine. He makes he makes the decision to look up at the ref,

[00:22:27] which the players do trying to see how much time they got to hold them down. And that triggered the ref to blow the whistle. Extremely harsh call. One that I was surprised at the time and I looked back at it and I was like,

[00:22:40] this is this is bogus. Like it's that wasn't a fair call. Like there was a bunch of others. Nico held one down. I think Trindle held one down. There was a bunch in the last 10, which were fine and allowed

[00:22:52] and fair, I should say, but the one against Ramian, which I think is around the time the next set where Toby gives away the penalty. Yeah, it wasn't one. And I think it was even a can't see if it was fifth tackle,

[00:23:05] but it was towards the end of a set. So it was fifth. Yeah, ridiculous. Felt I felt for Jesse in that spot. So let's get to a positive. Sifatalakai, a hundredth game. He played 60 minutes from the second row, mostly ran for 140 meters.

[00:23:23] Twenty tackles, just another beast mode performance. And there was a lot of focus on him last week and rightly so 100 games in our L. He he's really impressed me this year, Kieran, with his versatility, with his attitude in particular. It's super impressive. He's impressive.

[00:23:40] Mike, my question to you and I thought Sifatalakai was red hot to start the season. I think he's been really good for us in the middle, especially as that impact of the bench. I guess my question to you, mate,

[00:23:52] is who do you have your life's on the line? There's aliens now hovering above Shark Park with a laser gun pointed right between your eyes. And they say, you need to win this game or we're going to shoot you between those beautiful eyes. Sam, who is your centre?

[00:24:06] Is it Eero or is it Talakai? Depends who we're playing against. But let's say it's Penrith or Melbourne. You know, like one of the top tier teams, right? I know there's a gunpoint at me, but it's tough, man, because Eero brings a lot defensively

[00:24:19] and Talakai brings a lot offensively. And they both have pros and cons. And we've seen Talakai fail in defence at the top level like we have. We can't chew and cut that. Now, I'm not saying you can't improve on that,

[00:24:32] but we've also seen the points dry up a bit with Eero there and his man, Raolo, to the left. So if it's a finals game, I'm probably going, I'm probably going Eero, to be honest, at this point in time. But I know where you're going.

[00:24:47] Yeah, I don't know the right answer myself, right? And I think there is that question of, well, what does that do to the rest of the team? Right? Where is Sipha playing? He's coming off the bench now. What does that bench look like

[00:24:55] and all those type of things, right? But I think my point that is, is, you know, we've seen Eero now for, you know, what, nine, 10 games. And he's had a look very decent, but, you know, we have still seen some points dry up on that side.

[00:25:10] So I actually don't know the answer to that question of which one do I actually prefer? And I think I would like now to kind of have a more definitive answer based on the sample size that I've seen.

[00:25:20] Well, I get the feeling that if the shark stop giving away these stupid starts that we're winning games by six to 12, maybe more points. And it's probably not a conversation we're having because because they are, they are losing only by a little bit of late.

[00:25:39] And you're probably not relying on those points because you're ahead by points already. You're not chasing. If you're chasing, if you're chasing points, I'm probably going to put Taelica in there. It's super frustrating because when the sharks chase points, they score points.

[00:25:54] And it's one of the things where it's like, well, why did we have to dig ourselves into such a hole to get ourselves out of it? Whereas, you know, if we cannot even start red hot, but, you know,

[00:26:04] just get through our sets and then put some points on, we would be winning these games by 18 points or 12 points, whatever it is. And it's a completely different ball game. And we're backing out of fence to actually hold these teams out. So it's cool.

[00:26:19] So as as Peter Sterling calls it, the modern game in the modern game if you don't have the ball, it's not good because now we have repeat sets. We have penalties. We have infringements. We have sin bins, you know, pretty easy to get these days.

[00:26:35] You don't want to be defending in this game no matter how good your defense is. And our defense is decent. We've seen it. That's why it's decent. Like there's not major issues with our defense.

[00:26:45] But if you drop the ball on your first set, then they have a set. They get a repeat set and other a repeat set. That's 18 tackles in your line. Even the best teams, they can see it after 18 tackles on their own line.

[00:26:58] Yeah. So that's your bad start because the guy drops the ball. Your mate holds down a guy for a second longer. That's your bad start. I'm not making light of it or saying it's not a thing. It's a massive thing for Cronella, but it's so easy to correct.

[00:27:13] Don't drop the ball. Don't hold the guy down. Yeah. It's one of those frustrating things, right? You can see how devastated Cam was in the press conference after the game, right? He has nothing to apologize for.

[00:27:25] I mean, he did put his hand up there and he said, you know, that's on me. I caused that, right? And it's that momentum and flow and effect where one arrow leads to another. Tackle better for your mate, who's the best guy on the team.

[00:27:36] Yeah. Look, I'm completely agreeing with you. But if you look at the season, too, the frustration has been there has been so many tries where we've conceded where we kind of go, well, that was kind of like that was a difficult try. That was a bit lucky.

[00:27:50] Like the ball bounced the right way, like even the kick out one, right? Like that sort of stuff. But when those things happen consistently and you put yourselves in those positions, you have to go back and look at, well, how did we end up here?

[00:28:01] Right. And so it goes back to don't drop the ball. All right. Your mates dropped the ball. We need to then defend better. All those type of things need to come together. So it's I keep going back to this point.

[00:28:12] And I know that I was pretty critical on Toby earlier, you know, in this episode. To be totally fair, I think it was the worst game I've ever seen Toby play. And I actually would like him dropped for it because it was that bad.

[00:28:23] But we need Hamlin, New Delhi and we need Toby and we need them fit because right now those two guys on our depth chart are our one and two props. And right now we just haven't been out for the last two years

[00:28:35] to get those two guys fit and on the field. So how we do that mid season, I'm not sure. But I think, you know, if we had to dig ourselves out of it, we need those guys to be actually delivering for us.

[00:28:46] Hamlin, they didn't train last week due to a flu type condition. He missed the game on Friday, but he played for the Jets on the weekend. I'm not disputing like he I know for a fact, he was genuinely unwell. They still wanted him out there for the Jets.

[00:29:02] So that tells you something about the fitness. And when we say fitness, we're talking match fitness. The guy's obviously a fit person. We're talking fitness. So I think that the coaching staff agree with you that we need him out there. Come on, let's let's accelerate this.

[00:29:15] How can we do it? You go play for the Jets. The Toby thing, the only positive I'm getting out of it is the fact that he's a pretty genuine, honest guy and he knows how bad he was.

[00:29:26] Like he would he would not he'd be the first person to say, man, I was really bad. And I'm not saying that makes it OK. But at least he would acknowledge it. He will he will try and improve on that if he gets the chance this week.

[00:29:38] But it does open up bigger questions. And that is you've told Royce Hunt he can go shop himself around. But in 20 minutes, he's run for 60 meters, busting tackles being dominant as now it's 20 minutes. Can he go for 45? Can he go for 50? I don't know if he can.

[00:29:57] But he's kind of our best forward at the moment. So that scares me that you've told your best forward. You can go have a look elsewhere and there's six clubs lining up to get him. We've got Oregon Cofusi, who we've praised before on the show.

[00:30:11] And he was he was solid on the weekend. But I don't know if he's our starting guy moving forward. We know we've got a big home break coming in to take one of the positions at least. But Toby's signed right like he's a yeah, he's a shark.

[00:30:24] He resigned. I think you know, he resigned in November, I think for another two or three years. So, you know, he's here long term. So is Hamlin Ueli. So is AFB, right?

[00:30:34] So Hazelton, I think I saw that the club might have picked up the option on him as well. So he's here to resign as well. So you've got this nucleus, right? And we've talked about it on this show before, like,

[00:30:47] how do you find the best puzzle pieces and fit together and the need for experience because you can't have a green, you know, middle because other teams will go and aggressively attack that. So it's really a case now of Toby going back and, you know,

[00:31:03] looking himself in the mirror and saying, well, I've got to address that. But it was yeah, it was one of those situations. Well, the problem I have with that is I mean, he's had some decent games this year.

[00:31:14] And we've talked about it. He's had some eight out of 10 games. But when I look at his career, I don't think of him as an eight out of 10 player and I never really have. And watching that on the weekend, uh, that to me doesn't scream long term deal.

[00:31:28] All right. Now there's positives that Toby Rudolph, like he'll try his guts out. I mean, he played for what have we got? 33 minutes. So it wasn't even a long stint for topes compared to other weeks he's played. I think he's, I think he's playing injured.

[00:31:43] I think he's not sort of the fittest he's ever been. And I think that's a problem when you, when you're latching on to the guy running past you, who doesn't have the ball. It's a desperation kind of move. He's doing it for the team.

[00:31:58] He thinks he's doing the right thing. It's clearly the wrong. Yeah. I just wonder what the future is. And I'm not basing it on one game. I'm honestly not. We'll see what happens this week where he's named. We'll see if there's any statements or anything.

[00:32:12] Again, they didn't lose because of one guy, but he did have, I would suggest a career worse game. And I don't want any of these guys to be having career worse games, let alone in our run to the final. So that's that's the problem.

[00:32:25] I thought that I just thought that if we hadn't had that bad start and the problem with the bad start is we spoke about the bad start and they spoke about the bad start and the media spoke about this bad start wasn't going to happen this week.

[00:32:39] It did. You just, I don't know. You just got to be more focused. I don't know what the situation is. I can't even really blame. I personally can't blame the coach because it's like, well, I know that they're working on it.

[00:32:51] But what happens when a guy drops the ball? It's like that's on one person unless it's the guy passing it, which I don't think it was. Yeah. And it's just so insane because we've been watching rugby league for a very long time.

[00:33:03] And it's so strange to see a team consistently falling behind and falling into these sort of holes and then pulling themselves back up and then going back in a press conference, say, yeah,

[00:33:16] we did well to fight us, fight our way out of it, all that type of stuff. Right. So it's one of those weird things of saying, well, how do we shift that mentality back to a normal sort of world where we are starting

[00:33:27] and we're not we're not causing these things that are going to cause us pain. And even it might be similar to the Niko point where we're talking about it so much that we're making it into a thing. Absolutely. And absolutely. It's definitely a thing now.

[00:33:40] It is 100 percent of now. And the whole focus for this game coming up against the Titans will be the start and everybody in the pregame will be talking about it and everybody will be talking about it all week whenever this game is brought up.

[00:33:53] And the Titans, they'll be talking about if we can get off a fresh start against these guys, we can get them into a mental hole. And then we've just got to hold on, right? And that's what teams will start to do is they'll

[00:34:03] was trying to start to front load all their energy into that first 20 and then just hold on for green life because it's shown that you can all points on the sharks in the first 20. So the problem, the problem with Robi League

[00:34:14] is it's such a short term memory thing. We haven't done this all year. There's been games where we've come out and we've won because we've dominated from the start. First set of the roosters game, perfect set, perfect try. Like we can do it as a great point.

[00:34:30] And we've done it more than once. It's more than the roosters game. However, as you said, we're now in a bit of a pattern. So need to get out of that. Kieran, we're off to Koff's Harbour this Friday night.

[00:34:41] And if you're heading out that way, there's lots of sharky things going on. So I urge you to check out the sharks social crew. And if you're not on the socials, I don't blame you get on the website. But there's a bunch of stuff happening.

[00:34:53] There's there's Captain's Run. There's the merch fans out there most of the week. I think there's a few other events locally happening. So if you're heading out there for the week, have a great time. If you're heading out there for the day or night, have a great time.

[00:35:05] But there is a bunch of stuff happening if you're so if that's the way you want to approach your week. Titans are going to be challenging. They like to score points. Kieran and this will not be an easy game.

[00:35:20] We do need to accelerate this episode, Kieran, for deadline reasons. So we're going to take you straight to your favorite part of the week, which is random shark of the week. I'm hovering over two guys, to be honest. I don't know which way to go. I really don't.

[00:35:38] I feel like you're going to get both, which sucks. I feel like one's slightly more obscure than the other. I'm just going making me nervous. No, no, you got nothing to be nervous about. I'm just going to go. I'm going to go with.

[00:35:50] Is today the day Tosho gets his name called? No, it's not. I'm sorry, but. I'm going to go with this guy or whatever. We're on a deadline. Sorry, listeners. I've done my best. Born 28th of July, 1983. His playing weight was 87 kilograms. His height was 182 centimetres.

[00:36:12] What's that in feet? I don't know. Why are you asking me those questions? I mean, I grew up in Australia, but my whole knowledge of height is based on professional wrestling. He's from parts unknown. Leon Bot. It's not Leon Bot.

[00:36:25] And I want to know from listeners if you if you should not that you've needed this to be fair, but if listeners and viewers feel like you should only get a certain number of chances,

[00:36:33] I'd like to know because that would be one and that would be a bomb. He played in total 37 NRL games. OK, 37 NRL games. He finished his career, finished his NRL career in 2008 and he played 37 games. He played for four different clubs. You've got me on that one now.

[00:36:55] I was thinking it was going to be Missy Telepup. But I'm not. That's not my guess. What a great what a great player Missy Telepup was. One of those sort of underdogs that you think is not going to be that good, but he was actually pretty handy.

[00:37:08] And I remember there was one game where I think someone scored a try on him and he just started throwing hands. It was amazing. He was a tough kid. I wouldn't want to mess with it. You just started throwing punches at the guy who scored.

[00:37:17] It was it was unbelievable. Not Missy Telepup. He is I'm going to I'm not going to give you his junior club, but I'll say that he was Sutherland Shire based. Now, the Sutherland Shire, whether you like it or not, is a big vast area of suburbs.

[00:37:33] So keep that in mind. But with all of Bulldogs players, it's ridiculous. Well, keep your prejudices to yourself and out of this show. But I'm just saying it's a big Shire, but he I would say that he was in a junior club in the show.

[00:37:47] All right, he didn't play. So he played for four clubs. He didn't play any more than 18 games at each club. So 18 was the maximum amount of games he played at each club. His career is from 03 to 08. He spent one season at the Mighty Cornel Sharks.

[00:38:01] At this point, I'm not going to tell you what season it is yet. But he spent one season between 03 and 08. He also played four in no order. I'm going to make this as hard as I can for you in no order.

[00:38:12] He played for the Panthers, the Bulldogs and the Dragons. Panthers, Bulldogs, Dragons, Sharks in no order. Craig Stapleton. No, but I like I admire the guess. I swear he didn't play for Bulldogs. He played for the Dragons and Panthers. I admire the guess.

[00:38:30] He played for a lot of teams. Good forward. Journeyman. So this this fella scored 16 tries in total in the NRL and he kicked 15 goals. I will say I will say he didn't score any points for Cornel. He was in the position of one to seven.

[00:38:52] So he was somewhere in the back line when he was at the Sharks, we finished 12th. It felt like we finished 28th, but we finished 12th. What else can I tell you about this gentleman? His last game was for the Bulldogs in 2008. His first game. Price and Goodwin.

[00:39:11] No, not Price and Goodwin. Wrong. No, not Teddy Goodwin either. His debut game was against Melbourne in, I think, a pretty infamous game. Here we go. I've got it now. Do you now? It's Nick Youngquest. The random shark of the week. The very good looking Nick Youngquest.

[00:39:31] Well done, Karen. Still seem around. Is he still good looking? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Don't answer. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. He's still good looking. Well, I mean, I didn't do it for me, but I know that he was a model and people liked him anyway.

[00:39:46] I think he was like Calvin Klein or something. Oh, I think he had a good career. Yeah. Random Shark of the Week is Nick Youngquest. What do you remember? I remember that taboo game. I remember how fast he was. He was fast. And yeah, he was really quick.

[00:39:59] And it was one of those guys that had came up from the 20s that had a bit of hype about him at that time. And the whole thing was like this guy is once he gets into open space, watch him go.

[00:40:09] Unfortunately, it seemed like when he was playing for us, we never had the ball and that he was just being targeted in defense. And we never got to see his speed. So he didn't score a point for us. I don't remember the hype. I remember he was quick.

[00:40:21] And I remember people were saying like, if this guy gets into space, like watch him go. Sure. So he debuted in 2003, right? And then he was pretty much straight up to the to the Dragons the next year.

[00:40:33] I think it was one of those guys were after his debut, they put a line through him pretty quickly. And yeah, he never really came back from memory, which is not really fair because he played in an absolutely disastrous season with a disastrous coach.

[00:40:47] And who knows what a Stuart Raper could have brought out of him. Who knows? But it wasn't set up for success. No points for us. Yeah, five games for the Dragons over two years, seven games for the Panthers.

[00:41:00] Oh, sorry, seven and eleven for the Panthers, then four for the Bulldogs. So, you know, he was a fringy to be fair. But some good memories of Nick Youngquest flying down the wing. And that's your random shark of the week. Well done, Kieran.

[00:41:13] It took you longer than I thought, but only because I probably made it a bit harder for you than I. They were a little bit obscure. They were obscure. But that's what we're doing. We're not here to we're not here to make it easier for you.

[00:41:23] Kieran, we're not here for much longer anyway. But what do you think is going to happen on Friday night against Titans? I'm just very, very hopeful that I don't have a situation where I feel as frustrated and annoyed with this team because, again, I do love this team.

[00:41:38] I do like our roster. I do think we can go on a bit of a run given the state of the competition. I'm not saying that we've got an unreal roster or anything like that. I do think it's wide open.

[00:41:50] I think anybody can make the grand final and lose to Penrith. But other than that, mate, I just want to see them do well. I want to see them not start the way they have. I'd like to see a little bit of change in that 17.

[00:42:01] And yeah, I'm really hoping for a good performance. And I'd love to see Nico Dominic shuts some people up. Yeah, I think that's my main request from the team is to help him out and make him look as good as what we know he can be.

[00:42:20] The fact he's making so many tackles, I'm wondering if we can somehow, I know it's don't want to shift him around the field too much. But can he get some help out there? Or can they shut it down before it gets to him a little bit?

[00:42:32] That's a lot of tackles, 32 for a year for your halfback. It's also to the Bulldogs that's super stacked on that side with Bird and Cherry, Hickey Owl. So I don't think he's going to be faced with that every week.

[00:42:43] But yeah, every week he's going to have big second rollers running. I like the fact that he didn't miss a tackle. And so if you look at the Titans, look at the stats sheet and they go, let's run it, Nico, because he's a halfback.

[00:42:54] They'll be like, oh, we didn't miss a tackle. Let's go to the other side maybe. So maybe there'll be some relief there. I don't know. Is that David for Feeders? So yeah, well, again, so the Titans game plan is basically give the ball to David for Feeders.

[00:43:05] So he's in for another big night. Right. So again, focus on what you did. You did a great job of defending Kick-Out. You know, is that saying that they used to have from ECW, you know, accentuate the positives, eliminate the negatives. Focus on what you can control.

[00:43:18] Let's get Paul Heyman, the wise man in here. I think he's got a bit of free time at the moment. And you know what? I started watching like I finished work super late last night and I just started watching stuff like you do.

[00:43:26] And I got to, you know, the former great Wwe tough enough contestant Maven hang on. I was watching Maven last night. So he's got a bunch of stuff on YouTube. He's sort of basically telling you how the business is done. This was something else.

[00:43:42] This was him with who are the two Dudley's? It's Baba and Deva. He was with Devon. Yeah, he was with Devon. So Maven and Devon like now in like modern times, they were talking is two mature guys.

[00:43:56] And the episode was about and you'll be able to help me out with a name early in Devon's career when he was the tag team partner to the young kid against like there was a there was a there was a vice show about it.

[00:44:11] The guy that got absolutely mass transit. So what what the episode was was they were watching the video. You could see the video and Devon's taking you through the whole from the start of the night through to the end.

[00:44:24] And I'm watching this after a long night of work and I want to zone out, but I also don't want to have nightmares. And so I've realized what's what's going to happen. I keep watching. And I was like, you know what? I need to stop.

[00:44:37] But if you're interested in the mass transit incident and this is for our viewers who are 18 years and over. There's a thing on YouTube about it with Maven and Devon and Devon kind of talks you through it pretty honestly.

[00:44:47] Anyway, I just thought I'd bring that up because we're in a grim mood. Yeah, I was watching Maven last night talking about why he doesn't talk to Randy Orton anymore. It was 20 minutes of him telling the story. And basically it's because he doesn't work at the WWE anymore.

[00:44:59] So I completely wasted 20 minutes of my life. I think Maven had some some huge YouTube hits for different episodes he's done. And he's just a bit like us. Stretching stretching the content, you know, so he's trying to monetize that channel as best he can. God bless him.

[00:45:13] We're going to get out of here, Kieran. Thank you for your time and we will talk to everyone during the week. This is Sharkast Pod. We really appreciate you guys and girls for tuning in. There's not much more to say because we got to go up up.

[00:45:28] Crunella, Kieran, enjoy your week. We'll see you out at Cofs Harbour. Let's go. Let's get that W. Enjoy your week, everyone. Speak to you soon.