“Last week it might have been an internal motivation, purely because of the fact nobody gives us a chance in finals footy.
“Different individuals use different motivations to get them up for a game.
Toby Rudolf celebrates the elimination final win over the Sydney RoostersCredit: NRL Images
“Someone like Cam McInnes doesn’t give a shit what anyone says. A guy like Ronnie [Mulitalo] might care. I can be a bit of both. It’s about using your driving motivation for the team, and making the team better.”
Coach Craig Fitzgibbon said some players – not all of them – were motivated by the lack of external love.
“For us, we felt like nobody had seen our form line and the performances we’d had on the way into the finals – it was nothing more than that,” Fitzgibbon said.
The Sharks are often dismissed because of their smaller fan base, their run-down facilities, and even the lack of a genuine superstar like a Reece Walsh or Nathan Cleary. They did not have a single player involved in the Origin series this year.
‘We just need to win a comp … If it shuts some people up, we’ll have to do it.’
Sharks halfback Nicho Hynes
The simplest way to silence the critics, Hynes said, was simple.
“We need to win a premiership,” he said.
“The only thing we haven’t done the last three years, since ‘Fitzy’ has been here, is play in a grand final.
“We’ve made it to a prelim. There have been so many teams that haven’t played in the finals or in a prelim the last three years – there are nine teams that are not playing finals this year – but everyone wants to write us off.
Sharks coach Craig Fitzgibbon is preparing for a trip to Canberra.Credit: Getty Images
“We just need to win a comp. We want to do that anyway. If it shuts some people up, we’ll have to do it.”
The Sharks and Broncos are the in-form teams, with the former winning eight of their past nine matches.
“I love how quietly confident we are, and there’s a really good feel at the moment,” Hynes said.
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“We were wobbling in the middle of the year for a while, for a couple of weeks in a row, we had a couple of bad performances. We had to look at each other, have a good chat about what we wanted to be and what we wanted to do in this comp.
“The respect and love we have for each other, it’s showing in our performances.”
Prop Toby Rudolf, who scored the late try that sealed the win over the Roosters, said on Monday: “I want us to know what we’re capable of as a team. I want us to know that, just because we don’t have facilities from this millennium, that we’re able to still win games of football. And we will.”
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