Cronulla’s Nicho Hynes unfazed by Greg Alexander criticism as Sharks look to snap finals drought

Under fire Cronulla halfback Nicho Hynes says questions over his ability to stand up in big games will follow him around for the rest of his career as the former Dally M Medal winner looks to lead Cronulla to a drought-breaking finals win on Friday night.

The Sharks have been one of the most consistent regular season teams for the past decade, but they’ve only won one finals match since their 2016 premiership, with Hynes losing all four of his post-season games since joining the club.

One of those was an extra-time thriller against the Cowboys in 2022, while they also lost by a point to the Roosters last year, but there are fresh concerns over their ability to win big games after they were pumped by the Storm on Saturday.

Hynes and the Sharks have the chance to silence their critics against North Queensland on Friday, with Cronulla to start slight favourites.

“It’s a tag that will forever be there for the rest of the career,” Hynes replied when asked about his big-game critics.

“From 2022, I was still fresh and had only played halfback for 20 games I think it was. In that Cowboys game I felt like I played a pretty good game but we didn’t get the result. The Roosters game last year was similar – we only lost by a field goal as well.

“The game on the weekend was one where I probably needed to be better and I’ll own that performance.

“As a team as a whole we need to be better. I think they had 73 per cent possession and completed 44/46 (sets) and we had 12 errors.

“I think that we need to be better in all areas to win this game of football, and I still need to own performances and I need to own my performance to get us in a position to win the game.”

Saturday’s result prompted Panthers legend Greg Alexander to suggest Craig Fitzgibbon should consider dropping Hynes for the upcoming semi-final.

The halfback hadn’t heard about those comments until he was told about them on Tuesday, but that should come as no surprise given he deleted his social media apps a few weeks ago.

“Is that what he said? I don’t know. I haven’t seen any of it because I’m off social media at the moment. It’s not a worry of mine,” said Hynes who recently returned from a broken ankle.

“I have been off it for a few weeks now. I knew coming back from injuries and going into the finals that no one is going to help me out on there. The only people who are going to help me out are the people here and the players.

“What am I searching for? I don’t want to go on there and search for someone to talk negative about me or positive. It’s just pointless. I knew that once I was back from injury I didn’t want to be back on. I just focus on football.

“It comes with the job, it comes with the profile. All I try and do is wake up every day happy and try and make a positive impact on people’s lives and play some good footy. And some people want to bring you down for it. That is a them problem.

“It is what it is, I can’t change that. I can only control what I can control and be a positive person.”

Hynes is confident the Sharks can wipe Saturday’s loss quickly and return to the type of footy that saw them smash Manly in round 27.

The former Blues playmaker was criticised for failing to find touch from a penalty in the loss, and while he’ll use less sticky spray against the Cowboys, he says it was unfair for others to blame him for some other poor plays in Melbourne.

“That’s probably the one thing that I can look back on and think that’s where I made an error,” he said, with the try-assist machine starved of any field position to show off his attacking prowess.

“I can’t see any other time. I think the ball found me on the last when we were on our own 40 (metre line) but I didn’t take the short side (to run it). It came back to me and I’m probably getting ridiculed for that as well.

“It is what it is. Everyone is going to talk about my game and the game control, but I don’t think we were in that game for a lot of it. Everyone will keep speculating.”