GAMEDAY PREVIEW: Cronulla at Canterbury 2024

[00:00:00] Hey there, welcome to SharkCast Podcast, dedicated to the greatest sporting club in the world. The Cronulla Sharks is a short, sharp preview and turnaround of a preview brought to you by Dyson Logistics, the Royal Motor Yacht Club in Port Hacking, and Jason Hawes at

[00:00:46] Crips and Crips Real Estate. My name is Sam Shonazian, OG from 2015, been supporting the team a lot longer than that, and I had a little bit of time up my sleeve, which is not usually the case,

[00:00:58] and thought I would just jump on and do a bit of a preview of the Dogs game, which we hadn't really done in the two episodes this week. Monday we had an interview episode with Sifatallaki and Ranallo Miltalo,

[00:01:13] Wednesday we had the flagship episode with Dr Cameron Webb, which was fantastic. It was a great conversational long episode. We covered all things including the Dogs game, but didn't get into too much analysis or stats or history on the fixture.

[00:01:30] So I thought I'd jump on and fill you in on a few things like that. I can tell you the Sharks have updated their team list, so as we record on Friday afternoon, this is how the team lines up.

[00:01:42] Will Kennedy at fullback, Sionika Toa and Ranallo Miltalo on the wings, Jesse Ramian and Gail Iroh are in the centres, Braden Trindle and Nico Hines are the halves. So pretty strong back line there for the Sharks.

[00:01:57] Forward pack named this way, Toby Rudolph, Oregon Caffussi to be the props to start, Blake Braley to hook the scrum, Britton Nickera, Sifatallaki in his 100th game, second row and Cam McInnes captain at lock. The immediate bench for now is Jack Williams, Royce Hunt,

[00:02:17] Tall Tom Hazelton and Teague Wilton named on the bench returning from injury. Dan Atkinson and Jesse Colhoon have been named as the extras on the bench. One of those will disappear from that bench at around 7 o'clock tonight. A big Braden Hamlin-Welley has not been selected this week.

[00:02:38] He had a flu type situation, missed some dates at training and they didn't want to push that too hard. That's the reason he's not there. A lot of people have been asking and that's what's been going on.

[00:02:48] Royce Hunt also had a similar situation but he has been named to play and I believe he's back to 100%, which is great too here. Now you may see some tinkering with that team. You may see Teague Wilton start the game and Sifatallaki go back to the bench,

[00:03:05] where he's been very, very effective. We'll see what happens. I don't think fitness is a problem for Teague and I believe he's back to 100%. So he may start the game, which would push Sifatallaki back to the bench and the bench would then be, if that happened,

[00:03:21] Williams, Hunt, Toltom and Tallaki, which is a pretty lethal bench. Either way, the forward pack's looking pretty good. Not sure if those starting props in Toby Rudolph and Orekhan Kofushi will start the game or not but at this stage I think they might. So see what happens there.

[00:03:37] 7 o'clock you'll get your teams. 8 o'clock is kickoff. The Bulldogs team at the moment is as named on Tuesday. They have cut their extended bench down and one of those guys on the extended bench is Steven Crichton.

[00:03:50] So I imagine you might see number 23 coming in for one of the backs. Not sure who, I'm not a Canary Bulldogs expert but you'll see what happens there. But I do think that pound for pound,

[00:04:04] I know we have a better team than the Bulldogs just looking at it head to head. The things that I'm a little bit wary of for the Bulldogs would be Jacob Carras and his offloads, Matt Burton's kicking game and Kick-Ou's offloads. That's their strength in what they do.

[00:04:21] I'm not saying that Bronson Sherry or even Arid Marnie don't have their skills because they do and they play an important part in the Bulldogs team but the guys I mentioned before are your danger men. Football. This is the 101st game that we've played against the Bulldogs.

[00:04:39] They've won 56, we've won 42. There's been two drawn games. However, we have won the past six and we've won 12 of 14 since 2015. So in the past nine, 10 years, great record. In fact, our best record against anyone in that period of time.

[00:04:58] The past six games have been won by a good margin by us. The Dogs have only scored 10 points in one game in the past five matches and that was last year. They scored 20 points against us. Now at Homebush, they have won seven games to our six

[00:05:15] against each other but we have won three of the past four at the stadium. Having said that, Canterbury has won six of seven games at their home grounds this year and they've won five in a row at the particular stadium. They last won six back in 2012

[00:05:34] when they had a pretty good season. So they're definitely on a good run at their local ground. Now the big thing about the Bulldogs this year and you've read about it, you've heard about it and I'm gonna tell you about it, is their defense.

[00:05:48] So they lost 26 to eight last week against the Roosters in Gosford but that was the equal most points they've conceded all year. So they're conceding 17 points per game this year. They haven't done that for over 12 seasons. They're ranked first in fewest tries, meters and line breaks conceded.

[00:06:10] So defensively they're ranked first. Only one team is conceding less points and that is the Penrith Panthers. So the Bulldogs defense this year has been legit. We're gonna see how good our attack is tonight because we're coming up against a really good defensive team.

[00:06:27] Look, that could be circumstantial. That could be teams they've faced, et cetera, et cetera but obviously this year there's been a big shift in the way that Canterbury play but particularly defensively. So Sharks are going to be patient and they're gonna have to stick to their plan

[00:06:43] and they're also gonna have to be probably a little bit more creative than in some of the weeks gone past. So we know Cronulla has lost three of the past four. Defensively we were doing really great. Before round 11 we were conceding less

[00:06:58] than the Bulldogs, we were conceding 14 points per game. In the past five games though, we're averaging 30 points a game in defense and that is not good. That needs to stop tonight and never happen ever, ever again in our lifetime or anyone's lifetime because that 30 points per game

[00:07:17] is not a good thing to do. So tonight defensively we have to be on. I will say that the majority of those points were conceded in the first halves of the past five games. We're a second half team. We've spoken about during the week with the players

[00:07:31] and we need to get that first half happening real good because we are the best second half defensive team. NRO-wide we're the best in the comp when it comes to second half defense. The week off these days should not bother you

[00:07:46] in past times it has, but the week off has been kind to us. We've won five of the past six after having a week off including the past two. We need to start winning and we need to start winning regularly

[00:07:57] to get that top two, if not minor premiership. Our draw currently is very favorable. We currently have no opposition to play in the top four and the current top four we're not facing anyone. We also have the least amount of games against the current top eight remaining.

[00:08:19] Pretty good away from home. We've won six of eight away from Shark Park this year and we've scored 20 points or more in each of the past six games on the road. We spoke to him on Monday and hopefully you've heard the interview,

[00:08:35] but if you haven't go back a couple episodes on the podcast app or YouTube that you're on and you can hear a really nice interview with Sifat Talakai very thoughtful and just a bit of a deep and serious conversation about Sifat's life with the sharks.

[00:08:54] I found it completely uplifting to do and to listen back to. He plays his 100th NRL match. He debuted for South Sydney in 2016, played 11 games for them over two years but then came to Cronulla in 2020 and played for us. So 2018, 2019 not a lot going on for Sifat

[00:09:13] as far as NRL goes. He was hanging around lower grades. He was sometimes not playing and just working but we gave him that lifeline which he appreciates and he's spoken about and he's been with us since 2020. I remember that summer watching him train. I remember the trials.

[00:09:29] I remember getting very excited. I think it was with Gary Dover about him and Royce Hunt coming off the train and trial contracts and then winning contracts and starting off the bench in beast-like form. And he's been like that ever since.

[00:09:42] Talakai is just, I think a very underrated player and maybe I'm only coming around to that. I'm not sure. I mean, I've always liked him but I think we've seen that value of him from center to middle to edge. He can do it all in those positions.

[00:09:56] Just a really good club man to have around. Played the game of origin, don't forget and who knows what the future will bring for him. So we wish him all the best in his 100th game before he dominates and hopefully he has a great game

[00:10:08] and gets the win. We also spoke to Ranallo Miltalo in the same episode. He's now fourth on the All Time Sharks Tries scoring list of players. And he's alongside a legend in Matt Rogers. They both scored 75 tries for the Sharks. Ranallo has a good record against Canterbury.

[00:10:28] He scored six and six against them. So one of the more favorable teams for Ranallo to play although he's in pretty good form these days. He likes to score against most teams. Sione Katoa, our other winger has scored eight in six against the Bulldogs

[00:10:42] and that's his equal most against an opponent. So the two wingers looking for a big night out tonight. I mentioned Jacob Carras before he leads the competition in runs, has the third most run meters and the equal second most line breaks. So he's a very handy player.

[00:11:01] I spoke about Blake Taff and he's very hit and miss in my opinion. I don't wanna jinx things here. Don't wanna have this replayed while I'm sitting in a chair and being told I was wrong, wrong, wrong but up to this point this year in four games

[00:11:13] he's had four tricists, but he's also missed seven tackles, had four tricorses and four errors. So a very hit and miss this year and it's not a criticism of him. I'm just suggesting that if I'm the Sharks kicking team I'm kicking to him some difficult kicks.

[00:11:30] Lots of positives to the Bulldogs as I said. Ado Kha, Carras they're making line breaks for fun. Burton and Crichton are their most creative players along with Reid Marni it must be said and Carras and Kika loved offload as well. There's a little bit of information for you

[00:11:47] about the game tonight. For those of you heading out to the game have a great time, look out for each other and the kickoff is eight o'clock. I do wanna confirm eight o'clock kickoff for Bulldogs, Sharks at Homebush. Just some other news that has come

[00:12:04] to light this week officially and that is that Kade Dykes has been ruled out for the rest of the season and that's super unfortunate for him and for the team. He's a talented young fella and he's had quite a few setbacks and this is another one, it's significant.

[00:12:20] It'll be the same mindset with recovery. Just get back for the summer, train hard, try and work your way back into the squad. They think really highly of him both as a player and as a young bloke and he's obviously got the family genes and the history.

[00:12:35] So for now he's one of us and we need to hope that he has the best recovery he can but it is unfortunate news especially for our depth chart in the Harves. So far we've done well with Dan Atkinson there and Touchwood, nothing else goes wrong

[00:12:51] with our three main Harves, Trindal, Nico and Atkinson because after that it gets a little bit patchy and then quite young. There's some really great young players coming through. I saw young Raleigh Pollard who has been playing half for us in lower grades.

[00:13:08] I saw him trained for the first time up close this week and for quite a bit of time I was watching him and he's super impressive. So, but he's young. I think next up after the main three Sharks, probably Nifa Peru and then we can go through

[00:13:24] that another time but essentially the news is not good for Kate Dykes and we wish him all the best from the pod. All right, enjoy the game tonight. Let's get that W and we'll talk to you as soon as we can post game. This is Shark Cust.

[00:13:37] Make sure you follow us on the ex, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. We don't use all of those all the time but we do get to most of them most of the time and I'm in particularly with something like TikTok

[00:13:51] it's brand new to me and I'm sort of not used to it so I don't usually rely on it that much but every now and then we'll be on there. YouTube are putting up all the recordings we do. Some of them are videos.

[00:14:03] If you wanna go watch Cam Web and I talk about what we did in the episode last Wednesday, you can watch the whole thing and the quality is pretty good on that one actually. There's not too many lags or anything so. Point is make sure you're following us

[00:14:17] on all the socials and follow our, make sure you get notifications from all of those socials. You never know when they're gonna pop up next on what platform. Appreciate you all. Get in touch with us, sharkcustpodigmail.com. We'll be back for you shortly.

[00:14:31] Let's get that win up up Cronulla. Shonakes! Shonakes! Shonakes! Shonakes! Back in the Shire. Tell you what, slide time because we're coming home with a trophy.