Match 2026 NRL Round 1 - Cronulla Sutherland Sharks vs Gold Coast Titans 5:30pm, Saturday 7 March @ Ocean Protect Stadium

Match threads
apezza said:
Our players need to learn to expect the offload.

Too many times over the past year or so you see a half decent offload by one of our forwards, only to see out players ball watching. Need to stay awake looking for the offload
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It happened in our trial against the Raiders in the second half

A shark offloaded and one of our players (might have been JC or one of the look-a-like newbies) was watching for the next ruck / play and the offloaded ball hit him and was knocked on

HaroldBishop said:
We've won two round 1 games in the past 10 years. Terrible.
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Titans @ home, you can't really ask for a more favourable Round 1 game. Someone @ NRL HQ wants to see us break the curse

Now watch us go out kicking and screaming trying to hang onto this sentimental piece of modern Sharks history and make this as painful as possible to get past
 
Gards said:
It happened in our trial against the Raiders in the second half

A shark offloaded and one of our players (might have been JC or one of the look-a-like newbies) was watching for the next ruck / play and the offloaded ball hit him and was knocked on
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Nothing new then... unfortunately.
 
HaroldBishop said:
We've won two round 1 games in the past 10 years. Terrible.
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How often were we still around in September?

I don’t like kicking the year off with a loss either, but it isn’t much of an indicator. Be interesting to see everyone’s round one record and where they ended up. Start from round 2 for the Tigers.
 
Capital_Shark said:
How often were we still around in September?

I don’t like kicking the year off with a loss either, but it isn’t much of an indicator. Be interesting to see everyone’s round one record and where they ended up. Start from round 2 for the Tigers.
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For sure, just saying historically we suck round one for whatever reason. Personally I'd rather get a top 4 team out of the way first up.
 
Getting upset over a rd 1 loss is like getting overly excited over a rd 1 win.

Against a team like the titans, i want to see us play a complete game. Strong in attack, well disciplined with and without the ball and tight defence.

I imagine we could easily put 40 odd on them, but if we conceed over 20 points its still not a good showing
 
BlackWhiteBlue said:
Getting upset over a rd 1 loss is like getting overly excited over a rd 1 win.

Against a team like the titans, i want to see us play a complete game. Strong in attack, well disciplined with and without the ball and tight defence.

I imagine we could easily put 40 odd on them, but if we conceed over 20 points its still not a good showing
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The real concern would be if we did this and lost!
 
BlackWhiteBlue said:
Getting upset over a rd 1 loss is like getting overly excited over a rd 1 win.

Against a team like the titans, i want to see us play a complete game. Strong in attack, well disciplined with and without the ball and tight defence.

I imagine we could easily put 40 odd on them, but if we conceed over 20 points its still not a good showing
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Yeah, tend to agree on some points.
I’d prefer us to put in showings each week which equates to consistency.
Construct or score tries which will work every week, in finals etc, play a style which works comes come finals time where the refs tend to let the teams get away with more holding in the ruck, even the Storm prelim game where the ref went the other way & decided to penalise which resulted in a game which was stop start play.
Fitz said himself, it wasn’t a great spectacle, Storm went into that game with a style they were confident of implementing & were prepared to be penalised which allowed them to continually re set their line.
It didn’t suit us & Fitz said as much, j feel like at times, we don’t adjust or cope with the rhythm of the game, we have a way we are gunna play & don’t have a plan B if things aren’t working.

I’d also like us to get that ruthless edge, by that I mean, if we have put 20 or 30 on a team in the first half, go on with it,
Halftime objective, keep the foot on the throat, don’t let em score, no cheap points & let’s not put the cue in the rack with scoring the points.
It’s gunna be a tight comp this year, let’s not donate a 100 odd points in a loose for & against whether that be crappy tries conceded or not keeping the tries coming cause we try to go for the hail Mary’s.
 
Panthers have won around 50% of their round 1 games over the last 10 seasons

Some teams just start kinda slow and still have some rust from the post / pre-seasons

Fitz kinda alluded to it being difficult to perform @ 100% over an entire season (particularly physically in regards to intensity) when talking about our late season run of form and improved defense at the back end of 2025 and that this might have been somewhat intentional and part of his overall plan for the year and clicking at the right time instead of fading

Doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to win every week or that we are happy accepting bad form, we should be trying to improve every week but it just isn't realistic to not expect some bad patches and hiccups along the way

Not making Top 4 last year was quite risky on our part in terms of our finals campaign and there were multiple games we could have won (to get us Top 4) that we just didn't lock down and let slip

We just need to keep building the blocks, take more steps forward along the way than we take backwards
 
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