Daily Telegraph online poll shows NSW fans still don’t love Cronulla, despite dream of a maiden title

PAUL KENT: Cronulla’s dream of a maiden premiership should make them everybody’s second team. But as our online poll revealed, there is no love for the Sharks.

IT seems kind of roughly poetic that the Sharks have gatecrashed their own fairytale.

By any rights Cronulla should be sailing into Friday’s game against North Queensland on the shoulders of dreams.

Everybody’s second team. The sentimental favourites, bar none. Anybody with even a sniff of interest in the game would be hard-pressed to go past the Sharks as their hope to take it out lest they risk having their heart chipped out with an ice pick.

There are a thousand different ways to tie a ribbon on the Sharks story.

Cronulla haven’t sold the dream — nothing to do with this guy, surely ... Pic: Gregg Porteous.

They have never won a premiership. Ever.

That immediately gets the sentimental vote, as it was shown last year when everybody willed the North Queensland Cowboys to get home.

The Sharks are also in their 50th year, and what better way to celebrate such a milestone?

There are a dozen more reasons.

No group of fans have had to wait so long for a premiership, save North Sydney fans whose team won premierships in 1921-22 and could never climb the mountain again. Mercifully, the Bears were put out of their collective misery in 2000 but the Sharks are still in there, taking the mantle of the game’s longest bridesmaid after Souths ended a 43-year drought in 2014.

They are the last Sydney team left in the comp. The last NSW team if you want to be specific, yet still fans look elsewhere for someone to barrack.

The list goes on ...

The Sharks’ ASADA scandal tainted the club’s reputation. Pic: Toby Zerna.

They had to overcome being quietly identified for relocation several years back.

The NRL was privately of the belief Sydney housed too many clubs and the Sharks, whose boundaries are entirely surrounded by St George Illawarra or Pacific Ocean, were the logical club to pitch their tent in Perth.

On top of that they were almost broke. The best part of $10m in debt with only one lifeline left when they pulled it off, finding a $500m buyer to develop their adjoining real estate.

They had become a halfway house for players moved on from elsewhere, the old second chance saloon to the likes of Ben Barba, Luke Lewis and Mick Ennis, unwanted at their previous clubs.

They became such loveable losers they even found a place in folklore, Jack Gibson chiselling in stone that, “Waiting for Cronulla to win a premiership is like leaving the porch light on for Harold Holt.”

Andrew Fifita‘s arm message left a bad taste in the mouth. Photo by Matt King/Getty Images.

But somehow, despite all this, there is no love for the Sharks with a poll in Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph showing 50 per cent more people were cheering the Raiders home ahead of Cronulla. This, in a Sydney paper, with former Cronulla coach Ricky Stuart now guiding the Raiders.

Ouch.

The sins seem to be too much to overcome for fans looking to find a second team now theirs has been eliminated.

The lack of appetite for the Sharks began with the peptide scandal and snowballed through a style as ugly as it was effective as they bludgeoned opposition teams. It was tough and intimidating and they revelled in it.

Throw in Ennis the Menace, Fifita the arm artist, the troubled genius of Barba, the competitive arrogance of Paul Gallen, the small steps over the blue line with several others and the reluctance of the club to act, comes as too much for fans.

There is plenty to like about the current Sharks side. Pic: Mark Evans.

So the Sharks are friendless. In an odd way, the world really loves an anti-hero, Cronulla could still redeem themselves if they owned their reputations and admitted not everyone might like the way they have got it done but it is who they are.

Find a little gangsta cool. But the Sharks don’t even care much for that.

They sure are tough.