Catching Up With Kieran Over Coffee About Cronulla (11/8/26)

[00:00:01] The Royal Motor Yacht Club Port Hacking is a hidden gem of the Shire, situated on the banks of the beautiful Port Hacking. It's a great place to catch up with friends, celebrate your birthday or any special occasion, and they always show the NRL live on the big screens. The RMYC Port Hacking, proud sponsors of this podcast and big supporters of the Cronulla Sutherland Sharks. Check out their website rmycph.com.au

[00:00:26] They've got a Facebook page, or you could go old school and call them on 0295239300.

[00:01:05] Hey there, welcome to SharkCast Pod, a podcast for sad people like Kieran and I, who are sad about things like losing derbies we shouldn't lose. My name's Sam Shinazzi, I'm an OG from 2015 and been watching this team for a lot longer than that. So games like this I can kind of get through okay as much as I am the sad face today. Bit of a weird angle here Kieran, I hope it looks, does it look okay to you, the angle? Look alright? Are you talking your angle or my angle?

[00:01:34] My angle. Your angle looks alright, I'm concerned about my angle because I don't do this in my office anymore because of connectivity issues. You look like you're taking your mug shot in Vegas. Well, I will be in Vegas in about six months so maybe it'll come in handy. Welcome to SharkCast Pod, brought to you by Dyson Logistics, the Royal Motor Yacht Club and Port Hacking and Jason Halls at Cripps and Cripps Real Estate. Get our coffee from Mr. Paisley's. This morning worlds were colliding Kieran.

[00:02:02] I had coffee at Mr. Paisley's and then Liam from the Royal Motor Yacht Club walked in, had a good chat about what you could imagine. And then when I left, I got in my car and a big Dave Riccio, Marty McFly type vehicle pulled up next to me honking. And it was Jason Halls from Cripps and Cripps Real Estate who does live quite close to the location we're at. And he turns up his stereo, he goes, listen to this bloke.

[00:02:30] And it was the SharkCast, as Luke Lewis says, on his stereo. So worlds were colliding. That was about as bright as my morning got. But Kieran, how are you going? How are you dealing with the tragedy that was on the weekend? Just when you think that they have put that type of performance to bed and they've learned their lessons, they come out and they remind you of what they are truly capable of.

[00:02:55] So, look, extremely frustrating game to sit through and watch, a game that never really reached any great heights, a game that just felt like we were going through the motions. And some of those players could have caught a cold with the attacking football that we were playing. And the defence was not much better either. So a very disappointing performance. And I like that Fitzy seemed to be quite angry at the presser. Well, let's talk about that. And to full disclosure, aside from I think you sent me a message saying what the F was that,

[00:03:24] we haven't talked about this game at all. So very unscripted. Here for a little while to talk about it. Fitzy's reaction. Let's go with that. We'll fly all over the shop here. But Fitzy's reaction, which I quite like. Like it seemed very honest. But I do dispute some of it as far as my feelings go. And on 100% Footy on Channel 9 last night, Nico had a bit of a similar vibe. He and I, not collectively but separately, believe it wasn't the kick in the ass that we needed.

[00:03:55] We believe that we probably should have won the game. Absolutely. 110%. And for context, it's the second loss in effectively three months. Absolutely. But circumstantially, when you're going up against a very young side who's only won two other games all season, our bitter rivals, that's the second time in a row we've gone to Coggera and lost at Coggera, I believe. So it's simply not good enough. When you look at the rosters, when you look at the players, it's really strange.

[00:04:24] Because you see what everyone two weeks ago was saying, the Sharks are peaking too early. They need a loss. Then they get a loss. And then they're like, oh, they're pretenders. So it's like, I don't know where you go with that. But realistically, I was expecting us to go into the finals undefeated. That was my expectation. That's what I wanted to see. That's what I really thought should happen. I mean, we were paying $1.19 in that game. It was a pretty bad loss. It dropped. It was like $1.11. Yeah. So look, it's just one of those games you shouldn't lose.

[00:04:54] But I do think it did highlight a few key things for us. Sifatalakai is ridiculously important to this football team. When we didn't have him coming on on the 20-minute mark to get past that little bit of bogginess that was kind of there that we saw the week before when he and AFB and Burns were coming on the field last week, we saw that. Whereas this week, it was kind of just a bit flat. We didn't really get that uplift. And Kael Iroh. The Haradi experiment, I think he's banned from playing at Cogra moving forward.

[00:05:24] It was just one of those days where I'm not blaming him for the loss. But you look at that in hindsight, you sort of say, well, maybe that was the chance to give one of the younger guys an opportunity who will be here next season because what he dished up kind of got found out a little bit too. So I've got two pretty big lessons there. The only thing on the Haradi thing I'll say, Kieran, is that I legitimately could see Kael Iroh, Ronaldo Moultalo, Michael Gabriel, Nakora Williams.

[00:05:54] I could see all those guys potentially not making that tackle that you're referring to. I know there's other things. But that was a pretty fired up young Saints winger from the scrum. I'm not saying it's at all excusable in the slightest. But I just wonder, and we've seen Kael very up and down this year. It's not a shot at Kael. I love Kael. He's one of our number one centers. But I've seen him miss those ones this year as well. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[00:06:24] For me, I was kind of a little bit frustrated because we weren't getting the ball to Ronaldo for other reasons. And I was watching it kind of saying, like, we're just, every time we were going there, we were going away from it. And if you look at our performances, we've got to get the balls in our winger's hands. We saw that with Katoa. We need to see that with Ronaldo as well, right? And I just felt like we weren't getting to the right positions. And so that tackle at the end was a little bit of a cherry on top for me, I guess, from what I was seeing.

[00:06:51] But also, too, when I look at it and I sort of say, all right, well, we want to go with the best team possible for the day and Fitz obviously believed that Haradi was the best option possible. I just don't know the world's a difference between the two. I'm not within those four walls. Obviously, Fitz, he knows better than I do. But I do think we should factor in future-proofing. And also, we know what we've seen out of this. We don't know what we're going to say out of that because through that game, we've picked up potentially an injury to Jesse Ramian.

[00:07:18] So we might have to put in a Michael Gabriel in next week anyway. So I thought that was kind of a little bit of an opportunity to go, the team's high on confidence, the team's on a winning streak. We've invested in this kid for the future. We think that come round one next year, we think he could be ready to go. I mean, that's eight, nine months away. Why is he not in the mix for that game there? So not putting it all on Haradi, but I just thought from my perspective, that was a little bit of a miss.

[00:07:45] But the Talakai off the bench, I thought, was a really big miss for us because we just didn't have that impact off the bench. And we have been spoiled with that, with AFB and Sifra there lately. I thought the biggest thing was our forwards, man. Our forwards got out-muscled by a younger, hungrier pack. And I didn't see much there. I looked at some of the stats. Some of our stats are actually not bad. Some of them we won. We had more time in the opposition 20.

[00:08:12] But watching it from the naked eye test, I just thought we got out-muscled for most of the game. And I put that down to the forwards. I'm not saying it's every forward, but as a collective. Because I know that there's errors from our halves. I know that there were some kick defense tries. So the whole team was pretty off. Like, let's not blame any one core group or individual.

[00:08:40] But when people are targeting the halves, for example, because they're easy targets. And again, they didn't have great games. But I'm seeing Trindle trying to do like two or three, or it might have been three or four attempts at a 40-20 in that mid-period of the game where he knows he's got to turn the game around. And the only reason he's doing it is because we can't get out of our yard. Yeah. Often when we have a bad loss, we come back and say they got dominated in the middle.

[00:09:09] And this goes back a very long time. And we thought Adam Fennell-Blake was going to be the person that did fix that. I then go back and look for the weeks prior and what we saw. The game before at home was very stagnant that first 20, right? It was a little bit like, bleh. But it was when the bench came on. That's when the forwards kicked into gear with Burns and Siffer and AFB. And then this week, I don't know if we were waiting for that impact to come off the bench, but it just didn't arrive.

[00:09:37] And I felt like we were kind of behind the eight ball because of that. So I think it's going to be very interesting to see how we play with now Fennell-Blake missing for the next week at least. And then also when he comes back, are we going to? And I don't think that that is the play, have him off the bench. I don't think that is for finals football to play. But you need Siffer-Talakai there and you need to work out how can we have a plan B if we start the game as flat as we did?

[00:10:05] Because we've seen what that plan B looks like. And it looks really good when you've got Burns, Siffer, potentially a Colquhoun or a Toby Rudolph coming off the back fence. So a little bit of questions there. But they have been up for a very long time. I'm not making excuses. It's just such an annoying game for us to lose. And I'm sure your phone blew up like my phone blew up as well. Yeah, I mean, I can see every angle of it. And I know a lot of our listeners and viewers can. You know, the must win was it's a derby.

[00:10:34] It's top four on the line. It's we're going amazingly and they're going more or less terribly. They've obviously improved in the last month to give them credit. But the fact is they've won two games all year and we've won a whole bunch and we're sitting in fourth. So really, there's no excuses. We had a couple of injuries, as we pointed out, but we still had a pretty good team. And it's been also universally recognized. They were just more up for it. And that can come from being up for so long. I get that.

[00:11:04] I don't like it. I get it, though. So the argument about the loss we had to have is flying around a lot. Fitzy saying it's the kick in the butt we needed, which is similar kind of subject matter. But yeah, I'm kind of wrestling in between. As I've said, I don't think it's a loss we had to have because you'd rather have one against Canberra at home, for example, than the Dragons away for lots of different reasons. I think it looks better on paper when you say, oh, we lost to the Raiders at home by eight points.

[00:11:34] I do recognize, though, and it's historically been proven with this team, that they get their groove on after an embarrassing loss and they stay in that groove for a long time. And we saw it last year, which led us to almost the big dance. And there's talk that that will happen this year. And I'm okay with all that if that's actually what transpires. But we won't know that for a number of weeks now. And it starts with this week, of course.

[00:12:02] So I just, I don't sit comfortable with, well, it's a loss. It's one they've been up for. So I'm not comfortable with that, hey? Well, I was watching a podcast with Luke Keery and he seems to be on every single podcast. But he was sort of saying, he was disputing the fact that the Sharks needed a loss, like you're sort of saying, purely because it was like that lesson came after the Roosters game. When the Roosters physically dominated the Sharks middle, basically beat the Sharks up. Then the Sharks went away and said, this is the level of football we need to be at.

[00:12:32] And they produced that for six, seven, eight weeks, right? Now we've gone into this game and they've just dropped their standards and they've just not done the things that they should have done. And it's not a concerning thing, but it can be a confidence thing he was saying. And he's sort of saying, well, like we've done it again. And so that's where I think they've really got to look at this next block of games. And it's funny too, because they win the next four games, as I expect them to do. They'll be, people will be saying, oh, they've won four games in a row leading into the finals. They need a loss, whatever the case is.

[00:13:01] So you know, the narrative is going to change and you know, the narrative was going to change as soon as Nico missed that first kick, whether it was a 32nd kick, 34th kick, 35th kick, 40th kick. It would not have mattered, but that was always going to be a topic of conversation. And they're always going to link it to his confidence. Then they're going to link it to the Sharks. And they also need to sell the top four ranks. The top four is pretty set. It's going to be not impossible for us to drop out of the top four, but it's going to take a big stuff up for us. So they need that agenda to keep the race for the top four interesting.

[00:13:30] Yeah, I get all that. And that's a very good point on the, I'll say this. We're only one night away from the game as we record this, but last night's media, which is the bulk of it. The three channels have the shows and everything. They went pretty easy on us. I thought there was a few question marks, but a lot of them were like, nah, they'll be okay. Which I love. So I was a bit stressed about how that would play out.

[00:13:58] I'm not concerning myself with other meaningless podcasts, like the tourism one that that guy does with football on the side. But, you know, Nico was 100% funny last night and he handled himself really well. He was just upfront and honest and I loved it. On the goal kicking thing, let's have a bit of fun with that. And I say fun because I find it comical, but other people are dead serious about it. But I had people on the postgame show and I'm not dissing them because they're watching and listening right now.

[00:14:27] But I had people genuinely thinking that we lost the game when he missed that goal. And I couldn't be further away from what I'm thinking. Now, I understand that point of view. I understand people saying he couldn't get the ball down with the Gutherson try save because he missed the goal. And that's even the further stretch for me. He couldn't get the ball down because it was an amazing tackle from Gutherson and he should have got down lower when he got to the ball, when he got to the try line.

[00:14:57] We didn't lose because he missed the goal. He didn't not score a try because he missed the goal. He didn't have a 6 out of 10 game because he missed the goal. The goal was on his bad side at Coggera, a circular field, a whole bunch of morons yelling and screaming in his ear from the hill. Windy day or not a great day, weather-wise, overcast. That's why he missed the goal. You know what I mean? So I just – Yeah. I knew the narrative was coming.

[00:15:27] My friend Wally works in it straightaway as a joke. Like, he doesn't handle pressure very well. Like, I knew he was joking. I get it. But when people take it seriously, I kind of go, I don't really go with that notion. Yeah. I mean, this is a record – sorry, that has stood for 20, 30 years or whatever the case is at this point. And the fact that he's equal second with 32 in a row is absolutely ridiculous. And the fact that he's tied there with, like, Nathan Cleary, it shows you the level of difficulty that that is to achieve.

[00:15:57] And I think a couple of people tried to go along with that angle last night on some of those shows that I watched. And then I think it was even Brayton Aster laughed and said, well, he did do 32 in a row. Like, that's pretty ridiculous. Yeah. And the noise would have been there – it was there last week when he nailed all those shots from everywhere as well. So I just think he was going to miss one eventually. I don't think it's a big deal. But the one thing I really liked was right after that miss, he came up with a really good defensive tackle on our try line to stop a try. Yeah.

[00:16:25] So, again, that showed me how engaged that he was and that he was actually, you know, not dropping his lollies, so to speak. And, look, I thought his game was okay. For me, the issue was we just looked so flat in that game. And I don't put that on the halves because I was seeing the halves trying their best to try and pull something out when they weren't going forward and they just didn't look a threat because we just weren't making the meters. I legitimately thought the effort was there from the team. Like, I couldn't sit here honestly and go, they didn't try. They didn't try hard.

[00:16:53] But the execution was way off. I think they got caught out at the start a little bit, even though I think we scored first, yeah. But I think that overall they had the – well, the Dragons were the better team on the day. I think we were caught out a little bit by that for whatever reason. There's no excuses. But I think the effort was actually there. You could see them trying to win the game. They were trying to do things. It's not like they went away. I will say this, and I said on the post-game show and Fitzy kind of – he used the term we played like smartasses, I think, or something.

[00:17:22] Or we smart-assed our way through it. And I am of very much the opinion, having watched it back and watching it live, that we're trying to cut corners. And that's not – that's what was most disappointing for me. The whole – I think the whole performance – when I say trying to cut corners, maybe it wasn't a purposeful thing they were doing to do that. But that's what they ended up doing. You know, Trindle's trying to kick the 40-20s. They're trying to push the passes.

[00:17:50] They were trying to cut the corners rather than play how they'd played the previous 10 weeks. Yeah. And it's something that we do see a little bit sometimes when these bad habits creep in and when they run into a performance like this. And if you look at some of the things that we've spoke about over the last sort of 24, 25 weeks, however long the season is, I think it was last week we spoke about the Sharks' record versus bottom eight teams. So we'd actually played the second least amount of games versus bottom eight teams.

[00:18:18] But we had gone – I think it was eight or nine and O versus the bottom eight teams. So it actually showed that this year we had focused ourselves and actually got those performances right. This was a throwback to yesterday year where the Sharks come up against a really low side and then match their energy with it and then try and just put some flashy stuff on to get the points. And that's where I think you could see Fitzy was visibly frustrated. You saw it the week before when he was so pumped up and, you know, punching the coach's box and all that type of stuff.

[00:18:48] I think it's all playing into that narrative and it's still – it's working around how do we get the energy right? How do we get the cohesion and the level of focus at the right time? Because we're in a spot that's pretty familiar to us being around that fourth on the ladder at this time of year. We don't want to fall out of the top four and we want to finish as high as possible. We just saw what the Warriors did to the Panthers over in NZ. Now, the talk is not are the Warriors peaking too early.

[00:19:17] The talk is, wow, the Warriors look great. And to be fair, that was a tremendous win and they do look great for it. But I'm just saying that all these things that I think are all at play and the Roosters, people are saying are they peaking too early now? But now they're saying, oh, they're looking good. So I feel like we're in a really weird mix and the fact that we don't play a top four team or a top six team in the next couple of weeks is a bit of a disadvantage to us because we won't know where we're actually sitting and we will get written off by everybody else.

[00:19:45] So I feel like maybe that's part of what Fitz is doing right now. It's trying to send the message, stamp the authority down and sort of say, look, this is another chance for us to either do what we've done for the last few years or to do what we think we could do over the last 10 weeks because the window is still really there. And I still feel like we can match it with the best. A little bit of complacency, I think, is a little bit normal just because you're not going up against those big sides. And there's an air of us waiting to get to September, I feel like. Yeah, it's very well said.

[00:20:13] And I'm not being smart. Like the part of me that wishes it was anyone but the Dragons is very real. Like it's a very real emotion I have. And I get how immature that is as well. I get it. But I also just look at the two wins and I appreciate they've improved. And I just look at the squads man to man this year and I just think you really should have owned that. But everything you said is correct. And a down game isn't the end of the world.

[00:20:43] For and against didn't take too much of a hammering. That was a positive, so to speak, as well. So it's there for us to take. We're about 71 differentials ahead of the Dolphins on the same amount of points. So that's a little bit of a barrier there for us. We've got Canberra. We've got Titans. We've got Eels. We've got Storm. Storm will be really hard. Last game of the year. They're not going to die wondering. And I dare suggest the other teams won't either. So I appreciate we're not playing a top four, top eight team necessarily.

[00:21:12] But there'll be challenges there. That's for sure. So I'm personally in this weird space where I'm definitely looking forward to the next month. Like, this is what I do, right? Like, this is our time to shine. Shark cars can't wait. But I'm a little bit nervous about what's going to happen. Not because I don't believe we can win all four games. I just have got the recency bias happening. And it's like, what the hell was that?

[00:21:38] Well, if you look at the last four games at the start of the year, you would have assumed Canberra was coming off a year without a minor premiers that they were going to be a top four to top eight team at worst. You probably would not have had the Titans in the top eight, but you likely would have had the Eels. A lot of people had the Eels at the bottom half of the eight around the Jonah Peasant signing. There was a lot of hype at the start of the year. People buying into that narrative that Parra was going to be good this year. Personally, that wasn't me. But a lot of people were saying Parra was going to be a big improver.

[00:22:06] And then you finish with the Storm, who at the start of the year, you would have said the Storm would be in the top four. The reality is their rosters are good enough to be in those positions through injuries and rules and et cetera. Those teams are not in the positions where they would think they would be. But there's still some of those rosters are very good quality. And the Storm, depending on who they can get on the field, is going to be a big danger game for us. The Raiders this weekend, you saw how fired up Ricky was in his press conference going at his own players, for example.

[00:22:33] They're going to be breathing fire coming to Shark Park or Ocean Protect Stadium. And those games against Canberra are always right down to the wire. So I'm not expecting anything different, but I do expect us to get the win. And then the Titans game could be anything like the Dragons game. So it's a really strange mix of opposition that we face. But I think there's nothing wrong with going into the finals after playing Melbourne in the last round of the season, potentially with nothing to lose either.

[00:23:00] So we can maybe rest a player or two or however we want to do it. Maybe we do that against the Titans or the Eagles. I'm not sure how that's going to look. Fennell Blake being off this weekend. Sifatalkai being injured as well. Toby coming back from an injury. We've just seen ULA come back too. So who knows how Fitz is going to actually get this squad together. But it's going to be a fascinating month of football.

[00:23:31] We've beaten other top eight teams throughout the year. We haven't toppled Penrith. Haven't toppled the Roosters. So we've proven ourselves somewhat, I think. I don't think we need to play top eight teams week in, week out, leading into the finals. We're going to be playing the best of the best if we stay where we are week in, week out in September. And you've got to win all the games. And I'd rather face them then.

[00:23:55] I don't think – and I think Melbourne is a perfect – a perfect – not perfect, a very good team to play, a good example of a team to play in the last week, especially because it's such an unknown fact of what they're going to bring. Like they could just go all out attack on us. They could just do whatever they want. And we have to defend that. We might be playing for a top four. I'm not playing for – who knows what we're playing for. So the challenge is going to be there. I'm not worried about the whole, oh, they don't play.

[00:24:23] And at least it's come late in the year. Their draw is actually not that bad going in because the ridiculousness of the subject, which Fitzgerald talks about a lot, is, well, the top eight changes all the time. The top four can change from time to time. So that whole notion is just like a media kind of agenda. Yeah. But also if you look at the top eight, realistically, it's the top four is all that really matters.

[00:24:48] And if you look at the teams that are coming fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth, I don't see any of those teams looking to make a run in the finals. Now people turn around and say the Dolphins could make a chance. The Dolphins have a great roster. They had a few players out against us, and the Sharks absolutely spanked them. So I don't fear the Dolphins. Against the Roosters, there was that big lead that we had that we coughed up, and then the second game blew out towards the end. I've seen enough versus the Roosters to feel okay with that matchup. But in saying that, the Roosters are getting better every single week.

[00:25:18] So who knows what they're going to look like in come September. Panthers are always the stress for us. So when I say that, I'm saying that because if we're playing, say, the Rabbitohs again, does that matter? Or if we're playing the Dolphins again, does that really matter? Because really, it's going to come down to Penrith, the Warriors, and the Roosters.

[00:25:38] So for me, it really doesn't matter too much, but I would like to offset that because the Melbourne Storm are a team that you would normally put up in that echelon with those three teams that I mentioned. So I think there's a chance for us to finish on a really tough game. I think the Raiders are going to be really difficult this week too. And if the Raiders get the job done against the Sharks, the saxophones will be getting louder in the shot. But I don't expect that to happen. Yeah, things will explode if they don't win this week.

[00:26:07] So that's the pressure they put on themselves. You know, I can't sit here with sympathy because that's the performance they gave, you know? And I love this team dearly. This is one of my favorite teams. Legitimately, in all the time I've watched the Sharks, I love 2026 Sharks. So I only want the best for them individually and collectively. But they know that was way below standard.

[00:26:35] But the thing that I like out of it is, like, Fitzy didn't look scared. Nico didn't look scared afterwards. No one looked like the world was ending. The people whose world were ending were the fans, including myself. And I can cop that. So the fact that they're not believing that, they can shrug it off, play on. That's what athletes do. We've seen it. And we've seen Fitzy. This year, we haven't lost more than two in a row, I believe. So everything's going to be okay. And Fitzy's got a good rep for bouncing back.

[00:27:04] So that's the positive news. Sharks lose the Derby. Oh, geez. So we got Canberra coming. It's going to be a tough one. What were your thoughts at full time, Kieran? Window was still open for you? All the emotion took over and then you went, no, it's open. No, look. Very quickly, there's a saying that exists in the world of investing. And it's a saying that I do live by.

[00:27:32] And the saying goes, when in doubt, zoom out. So for everybody that's an Australian property holder at the moment, you might have seen the markets going down a little bit. People are panicking. They might have just bought their first home and they might have used this new scheme to buy it. And now the equity and their debt outweighs the value of their house. And when you're in that moment, it feels this is terrible. Or if you buy a stock and the stock goes down 20%, you're going, oh, my goodness. But when in doubt, you zoom out and you actually look at the bigger picture. So you can go and look at historical growth rates and all that type of stuff.

[00:28:02] And you can actually go, all right, well, this is just a little dip. So after that performance, I zoomed out and I looked at objectively the last three months worth of football. And have I seen enough? And did that cancel out what I had seen? And the answer was no, it did not cancel out what I had seen. The frustrating thing was for me, it's so many of these dumb things that we've seen in the past that I was hoping that we have corrected.

[00:28:25] However, it's going to be a lingering thing for us until we do jump over that final hurdle that we will always have to deal with until we get it done. And I don't know how you ever stop that. Because the other thing I'll say to you, Sam, is that's what the sixth or seventh loss for the year, is it? Yeah. Something like that. The losses feel very bad as a shark. There is an expectation that we do win every game. But from the outside noise, nobody ever gives us that credit. Nobody ever instills us as those sort of favorites.

[00:28:53] But there is an expectation that when the Sharks turn up on the field, unless it's Penrith, we're going to win that game. Every other game is a 50-50 at worst. Which is awesome. I'm talking against the Warriors. I'm talking against the Roosters. Exactly, right? So there's a reason why we have that standard and we do think of ourselves in that way. But, geez, they are capable of it. But the one thing I will say is I don't think you could say that they've put in one of those performances in a big game. I can't recall that.

[00:29:21] Now, if I'm wrong, please write in and tell us a game where you think that it was a big game performance and we really dropped the lollies in the last sort of two years. Maybe earlier on in the Fitzgibbon era and the Cowboys game is a good example, but we weren't blown off the park. We lost the game. It wasn't as if… That's not that. No, no. I wouldn't include that. That's what I'm saying. But when we've had these bad performances, it's been against the Roosters who are on demand. And they were getting plumbers off the street and they came out and beat us. Similar sort of things against the Dragons this week.

[00:29:50] So when they've done these performances, it hasn't been against the top teams with the big pressure games. I don't expect that we would turn up to one of those games where we are so invested in and so eager to prove ourselves and dish up something like that. I think for us, the risk is these lower teams starting to be between us in September. And then how much are we focusing all over the place?

[00:30:11] Because it's going to be a really up and down sort of four weeks just because of who we're playing, the roster, injuries, suspensions, players coming back, players coming. Who knows? And we've got to get everybody fit and we've got to get there. We're awaiting Jesse Ramey news that might break before we release this. But that could be a major thing. Like he might be gone for the year and then we've got to work out something. So there's a lot to happen in this next month. So buckle in. I like that.

[00:30:40] When in doubt, zoom out. I think that's what we do on this podcast. We try and not get too crazy too soon. And I have to say the postgame show was really – everyone was pretty well behaved, very honest, which I love. I always want the honesty. It wasn't this sort of depressing spiral that I thought it would be. There were some real honest down moments. But there were also people believing that the window's open. And I'm not saying that's why it wasn't depressing.

[00:31:07] But everyone's kind of attitude was really like open and honest. And I was really dreading doing that show just because it was the dragons and the loss. But I jumped on straightaway full-time and everyone was really cool. So I think that people are open to that. When in doubt, zoom out. I like that. A little bit modern for my liking, but I like it. Well, I've been invested in things like crypto and Bitcoin for like coming up to about 10 years now.

[00:31:36] So there's a lot of ups. There's a lot of downs. But again, if you stick with the journey and you stick with all these different things, you usually feel better about your investments. And I've bought properties that have gone underwater. I've invested in stocks that have absolutely tanked. Hold it. You'll be okay. And that's what we're doing with this roster, right? With this roster, we've held this roster together. We're going to see it out. This team has potentially two months left. Eight weeks. What is that in days? I'm not good at maths. Eight times seven is what, Sam? 56. I'm good at maths. 56 days potentially together they've got left, right?

[00:32:05] Like that's not a lot of time left when you actually look at number of days between now and that grand final day if they were to make it that far. Like we're in the middle of August right now. This is slowly, this is quickly coming to an end for this roster and this team. And now's the time for them to really make it happen. As our friend Craig Fitzgibbon, Blake Braley and Mark Horne say, don't count the days, make the days count. Don't love your job, job your love.

[00:32:34] You just wrecked the podcast, Kieran. But it's your podcast. That's okay. We're out of here shorty today. And we'll get back to you with a longer one for sure when Kieran and I both have more time. But appreciate your job being on, Kieran. And glad to see you got through the derby loss. Pretty good. That's pretty good. You're here and growing your colours. I like it. Surviving, my friend. And it's really looking forward to going down to the football on Saturday though. So I think it's our last day game of the season.

[00:33:03] I think I saw somebody right. Or maybe it's our last home day game. So really looking forward to getting down there and having a few beers and relaxing because I'm stressed. Or a couple of, what are they called? Is it the, what's the drinks you give me every time I go out in the Shaft Park? Oh, they've got like the hard solos, the hard lemonades, sorry, hard banters. Have you seen our friend Cam McInnes do the ad for it? I have not. He looks like a different person.

[00:33:32] They've combed his hair. There might be like 1% makeup. I was like, I know that guy. It's Cam McInnes and he's doing hard solo ads. Is it, like what channel do they advertise on? I saw it somewhere big. Like, look it up. It's like a proper ad. And he's doing like talking. It's hilarious. Well, there you go. Cam has got, he's a male model now. He can add that to the resume of an impressive career. I'm telling you, he looks good and he sounded good. He's got a bit of talent there.

[00:34:01] When you see it, you'll be like, oh, okay. Well, sometimes you do see these players, they make their transition. I know one of the Burgess brothers is going to try and be an actor. Maybe Cam could be the next Heath Ledger. Could be. Could be. Why so serious, Cam? Yeah, exactly. All right. On that note, we're out of here. Hey, Kieran, thanks for joining your own show. Catch you up with Kieran over coffee about Granola. And we'll see you down at the Ocean Protect Stadium. Three o'clock kickoff on Saturday. It's an earlier one.

[00:34:29] Don't be fooled by the time and the day. We've got more things coming for you. So don't go anywhere. Up, up, Granola. Bye-bye. SharkCast is supported by the best and most honest real estate agent in the Sutherland Shire, Jason Hawes from Crips & Crips Real Estate. He's an expert in the Caring Bar region and has his eye all across the shire. Lifelong Sharks fan and supporter of this podcast. If you're looking to buy or sell in the region, the person you need to be talking to is Jason Hawes from Crips & Crips Real Estate.

[00:34:59] Call him on 0410 417 450. That's 0410 417 450. Jason Hawes, Crips & Crips Real Estate. Sharkies! Sharkies! Back in the shire.

[00:35:29] Turn your porch lights off because we're coming home with a trophy.