With a minute to go, Shane Flanagan rose from his seat on the sideline and walked off down the tunnel.
He had seen enough.
A dismal second half performance from Cronulla saw the Sharks go down 20-16 to bitter local rivals St George Illawarra on Thursday night, leaving Cronulla with two losses from their opening two matches of the season.
The Sharks were electric in the first half, shooting out to a 14-0 lead on the back of an almost perfect opening half hour at Southern Cross Group Stadium.
But their second half performance was equally as bad. Errors upon errors, the Sharks continually invited St George Illawarra back into the match.
The Dragons didn’t need much of an invitation. With a strong wind behind them, the visitors controlled an important 10 minute period in the second half when Jason Nightingale was sent to the sin bin.
St George Illawarra won that period 4-0 with two Gareth Widdop penalty goals. The Sharks’ poor recent home record continued, they lost seven of their 12 home matches last season. And for Flanagan, his side simply didn’t deserve to win.
“It was really disappointing. One error in the first half then we trotted out 10 in the second half. They’d probably be disappointed with their first half and we’re terribly disappointed with our second half,” Flanagan said.
“You just can’t do it. Some of the errors we made in the second half were fundamental. Kicking out on the full, not catching kick offs and so on. I’m really disappointed. We showed the way we can play in the first half.
“We were our own worst enemy... it’s hard to work out.”
Much of the pre-match build up had surrounded Flanagan’s decision to move Josh Dugan to fullback, with Valentine Holmes shunted to the wing to accommodate his Australian teammate.
Holmes endured an unhappy night, struggling to get involved and making some uncharacteristic errors. For the most part Dugan was impressive against his former club, carrying the ball strongly from the back and safe against the Dragons’ kicking from halves Widdop and Ben Hunt.
But Flanagan played down the switch as having any effect on the result.
“Both of them had errors in their game today but it had nothing to do with the position they were playing. The game was so close, Duges had an opportunity to score a try and he didn’t get it down,” he said.
“We can bang on about Valentine playing on the wing. His best position for us at the moment is on the wing and that’s where he’ll play. I’ll talk to him about his game, he had some errors in it. He’s an Australian winger and we need to pick it up, not only him but everyone.”
Paul McGregor, who never won at Shark Park as a player and lost his first two games here as a coach before last season, now has two wins in a row in the shire. The Dragons’ coach was delighted with the gutsy fightback from his team, who have now won their opening two matches to sit top of the table.
“They did [show plenty of courage]. The Sharks were playing some good footy, there was a fair breeze. So we just needed to swing that possession around and get that field position. And keep the Sharks under 16 points which we managed to do tonight,” McGregor said.
“You don’t come here to win pretty. You come here to scrap to win. And we scrapped well tonight.”
