Cronulla Sharks deny they have the premiership wobbles as NRL finals near
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SO YOU ask Luke Lewis if Cronulla has the premiership wobbles?
“Look, everyone has an opinion,’’ the Sharks veteran cackles. “But I don’t think so, no.
“We’ve just played four months, five months of football without having a loss. But then we have two, and a draw, and everybody thinks the world has come to an end.
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“But the NRL season, it’s long. And it’s hard to keep (winning) for 26 weeks.
“We were lucky enough to do it for 16 straight and we really enjoyed that. But we’ve also learnt some lessons over the past couple of weeks too. And we’ll get better from that.”
Arriving on the Central Coast on Wednesday for a three-day camp, senior Sharks players rejected suggestions the club was on a downward spiral as the playoffs neared.
Speaking on Triple M earlier this week, league great Andrew Johns suggested the Sharks, while still second on the premiership table, were suddenly looking flat in games, picking up injuries and suffering what he described as the premiership “wobbles”.
Indeed at Central Coast Stadium, both Lewis and captain Paul Gallen were rested from training, with the latter spending much of his time laid on a massage table by the sideline, receiving treatment from two physios.
Lewis insisted afterwards, however, that the pair should be right to go against South Sydney in Monday Night Football.
Both Lewis and fullback Ben Barba also insisted successive losses against St George Illawarra and Canberra, coupled with a draw against Gold Coast, had simply reminded the players of what it would take to win the club’s first premiership in 2016.
Quizzed on the losses, the veteran forward said: “There were things working for us, little things, that we went away from.
“And I won’t tell you what those are, otherwise other teams will start to get on top of it. But in our video sessions, the coach has shown us and we understand. We know we have to get back to doing those little things we prided ourselves on from round one to round 19.
“Things that in the last two or three weeks, we fell away from. It’s a good reminder.”
Barba agreed, adding the Gosford getaway was far from some knee-jerk reaction to getting their season back on track.
“This camp was always planned,’’ he said. “Obviously when it was first brought it up, we were still talking about how many games we were going to win on the trot.
“So now it’s a different mindset. A different focus. But we know we’ve only lost four games this season. People are quick to forget that.
“There are also other teams at the top struggling like North Queensland, and Melbourne lost on the weekend. But we know what we have to do.
“The last two weeks, we’ve been down on our attitude. Opposition teams have been running harder than us, tackling harder, picking guys up and rushing them back — doing to us what we were doing to sides earlier in the year.
“In the past, Sharks sides were the spoilers. Now it’s the other way around ... now we’re the hunted and team’s are coming to spoil our party.”
Asked about the injuries to both himself and Gallen, Lewis added: “It’s my understanding that Gal really wanted to train today.
“But staff thought they’d give him an extra day. So I’m expecting him to play but who knows?
“With me, I’ve got no dramas or anything, it’s just an extra day off. It would have been good to be out there training but you have to take the club’s advice.”
Originally published as Cronulla Sharks deny they have the premiership wobbles as NRL finals near