Sharks coach Craig Fitzgibbon admits his facet has “made it hard on themselves” within the race for finals because the competitors enters the ultimate 5 weeks of the common season.
The Sharks misplaced their third in a row when crushed 28-0 by the Panthers on Saturday evening, unable to indicate any efficiency in assault.
A month in the past, the Sharks have been sitting fairly within the prime 4, nonetheless their previous month has seen them drop to seventh, with an opportunity to be in eighth by the tip of the spherical.
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“We’ve made it hard, we’ve made it hard for ourselves but we aren’t without fight,” Fitzgibbon responded to a query in his post-match convention
“I’m hoping you guys (media) picked up on the amount of effort that went into tonight, they showed they care about each other.
“I feel like we are preparing to go down swinging and we aren’t out of it yet. Anything can happen.
“We shot ourselves in the foot with fundamentals and errors but we didn’t with effort, heart, spirit and the goal line defence.”
The Sharks have been cruelled early by the lack of fullback Will Kennedy, who’s taking a look at an prolonged stint on the sidelines after tearing his hamstring within the opening minutes.
Fitzgibbon lamented Kennedy’s harm, saying it wasn’t excellent however believed it wasn’t the one factor that went towards his facet.
“It looks like a pretty significant hammy tear. Not looking great,” Fitzgibbon mentioned.
“It’s obviously not ideal, you prepare to come in here and throw down and need a few things to go your way and they go sideways pretty quick.
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“We had four forwards on the bench so you work around what you are going to do if it does happen but doesn’t make it easy to deal with when it does.
“I don’t want to get to a point where you are happy about getting beat 28-0, but so many things went against us and I’m not talking about injuries and I’m not going to complain about you know what but you saw it. You guys can make an assessment of some of those (refeering) decisions.
“The kicking performance from Nathan (Cleary) really put us under pressure there and it felt like we were defending the whole game and then when we got the ball the price we had to pay for the amount of defence we (did).
“We didn’t honour the fundamentals of the game, errors and discipline, but geez we had plenty of heart for the amount of defence we had to do.”
The Sharks made 398 tackles for the sport, a whooping 130 greater than the Panthers did (268).
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Fitzgibbon praised the herculean efficiency of ahead Cameron McInnes, who performed the complete 80 minutes and broke an NRL report for tackles in a match (84).
“How do you get to the point where you have to do that much defence, you know?” Fitzgibbon mentioned with a chuckle.
“That’s Cam. He turns up every day and he’s so consistent. He’s always got bark off him.
“We were in the box and the analyst made us aware of it, and we thought is he looking like he’s declining energy wise and he had a couple of slight wobbles, but he looked great so we thought we’d let him play 80 and let him be great.
“It was a hell of a knock.”
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