‘No respect. Ever’: Nicho Hynes is fed up with anti-Sharks sentiment

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Nicho Hynes has given up waiting for the rest of the rugby league world to show Cronulla some respect.

The Shire club has made the finals four years in a row and took care of a star-studded Sydney Roosters last weekend to set up a semi-final against Canberra on Saturday night.

Should the Sharks triumph in the nation’s capital, the easy narrative will be how the Raiders nursed an emotional golden-point hangover from the loss to Brisbane and were disadvantaged by a six-day turnaround.

Hynes let his emotions slip in the winning sheds after the Roosters’ victory, telling the assembled media to continue writing off his team.

When asked about those comments on Monday, Hynes said: “Nobody gives us a chance – ever. Nobody speaks about us.

“If we win, it’s about how they [the other team] were injured, or how they’re players are missing, or they didn’t play well.

“We’ve been to the finals four years in a row, and still nobody gives us a chance. We’re staying quiet and staying humble. We have plenty to do this week.

“I just don’t think that we get any respect – ever.

“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 Roosters

“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.

“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.

“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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