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Opinion
Many moons ago, in one of the annual redundancy rounds in media land, one of the corporate toe-cutters, in trying to justify the latest round of slashings and burnings, told a newspaper reporter that much of the work they did was perfunctory.
After the tense meeting came to an end, the crestfallen hack stormed out of the beige meeting room to exclaim “I don’t know what that word means, but I know it’s an insult”.
A perfunctory task is basically when someone performs the role for the sake of doing it, going through the motions.
Unfortunately for the Sharks, a lot of what Nicho Hynes has done on the field in the first round rounds of 2025 his performances have been enough to get by, no more, no less, rather than anything dynamic from the former Dally M Medal winner.
It’s not through a lack of trying. Hynes is busy for the Sharks in attempting to recapture the form of a few years ago when he came from nowhere to be crowned the game’s top individual player.
But he appears to be too intent on setting up other players or taking a back seat while Brayden Trindall handles the playmaking duties, rather than taking the game on as he did in his breakout 2022 season.
Over the course of NRL history, the winners of the top individual honour primarily fall into two categories.
The first is the out-and-out superstar, the player who is remembered as an all-time legend of the game, like multiple winners Jonathan Thurston, Cameron Smith and Andrew Johns.
And then there’s the players who had a superb season where everything came together, which turns out to be an anomaly compared to the rest of their career.
Players like Jason Taylor and Paul Green fit that mould from the 1990s when the Rothman’s Medal was considered the top individual honour over the Dally M while Hynes, Ben Barba in 2012 at Canterbury and Jack Wighton four years ago at Canberra, are in the latter category.
Matthew Johns espouses a theory that Hynes is a better fullback than a halfback and with Will Kennedy unsigned beyond this year, the Sharks could potentially look at returning Hynes to the No.1 jersey, where he first made a name for himself while filling in for Ryan Papenhuyzen at the Storm.
But that would leave a glaring hole in the halves, which would have been filled by Dan Atkinson, but the utility has already inked a three-year deal with St George Illawarra, so it is clear that shifting Hynes out of the halves is not in Cronulla’s plans.
Nicho Hynes. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
Sharks coach Craig Fitzgibbon is loyal to Hynes and has repeatedly said that he is happy with the current arrangement where his two halves interchange on either side of the field and take turns in dominating the decision-making.
It’s educated guesswork to say that it will not pay off for them come finals time when they try to reverse their recent trend of playoff fade-outs, but if you look at most grand final winning teams, there is a clear on-field general and the buck stops with them.
They usually have a supplementary halves partner who steps up when needed, but is more focused on creating attack with their running game or from standing a couple of passes wide of the ruck, such as Jarome Luai during his time at Penrith riding side-saddle with Nathan Cleary or Cameron Munster’s arrangement with Jahrome Hughes at the Storm.
Hynes averaged 61 possessions per game last season while Trindall was close behind on 45.
Although it was Trindall who was their linchpin in attack, notching 53 total try involvements in 20 matches to the halfback’s 32 from 18 appearances.
This season, Trindall is up to 52 touches each match while Hynes has dropped to 56 to make it almost a 50-50 split.
Cronulla have done little to get the monkey off their back this season about them being a team that can account for the lesser lights but one that struggles against elite competition.
They botched the big moments in Las Vegas when they were up against a Penrith team that was ripe for the plucking after a nearly non-existent pre-season and last Saturday at Shark Park they were no match for competition leaders Canterbury even though they were without star duo Matt Burton and Viliame Kikau.
Those losses bookended clinical victories over the Cowboys and Rabbitohs, two teams who may or may not be in the top eight come September.
Jacob Preston celebrates Canterbury’s win over Cronulla. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
They were perhaps unlucky last weekend when Bulldogs hooker Reed Mahoney avoided the sin bin for a heavy and high hit on Sharks utility Daniel Atkinson after he was defenceless on the ground when he collected a loose ball.
However, Fitzgibbon was having none of that being a reason for their 20-6 loss and he did not want to add to the pressure on the refs heading into Round 5 after they were given an edict from head office to use the sin bin more readily for foul play.
“It (the Mahoney incident) is almost irrelevant now, you hand it over to the people who make those calls,” Fitzgibbon told reporters on Wednesday at his media conference.
“If they make them, they make them. You don’t want to be on the end of a soft one either now, so we’ll wait and see what happens this round.”
They face a tricky test on Thursday night when they venture south to the nation’s capital for a clash with the equally hot and cold Raiders.
A 2-2 start to the year is as middle of the road as you can get and even if the Sharks drop another game there will be no panic stations in the Sutherland Shire.
But this is a team that cannot afford to finish outside the top four if they have any chance of silencing the critics at the business end of year.