There are stadium DJs, then there are ones who, all week, read the newspapers, listen to the talkback radio and watch the chat shows, waiting for their moment to shine.
Take the Allianz Stadium table turner, who had must have been begging referee Ashley Klein for half an hour to blow his whistle. Then he stepped into the proverbial batter’s box.
Pressure pushin’ down on me
Pressin’ down on you, no man ask for
Nicho Hynes might not have heard Greg Alexander argue he should have been axed for this game, or what @Greg8738 spewed on X from his keyboard in the basement because he’s logged off social media, or even what his own fans think of him, but the stadium DJ belting out Under Pressure, an old Queen and David Bowie classic? How could he possibly avoid that?
No man, particularly the one wearing the Cronulla No.7, asked for that banger.
But as Cooper Cronk once opined during his playing days: what is pressure? You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, you can’t smell it. So, does it even exist?
Sharks halfback Nicho Hynes.Credit: Getty Images
Umm, yes Cooper, I think it does. Just ask Hynes. But maybe a little less now.
The craziness of the NRL is that if Cronulla lost to the Cowboys on Friday night, what would have been the club’s eighth straight finals defeat stretching back to 2018, and fifth of the Craig Fitzgibbon era, then it would have been a hot and uncomfortable summer for many at the club.
But at the same time, there would have been at least a dozen other NRL clubs who would have killed to be the Sharks over the last three years: well coached, highly consistent, perennial finalists.
Thankfully, we don’t have to talk about it any more, even if they did flirt with blowing a 24-0 half-time lead. The Sharks have dumped Scott Morrison as their No.1 ticketholder, and their finals hoodoo, all in the one year. A win all round.
But unlike when Hynes was the ringmaster of the Cronulla circus, Fitzgibbon has found a way to get the best out of his $1 million-a-season man by letting him flourish somewhere down on sideshow alley. And that’s perfectly fine. The main stage is all Braydon Trindall’s now.
Trindall is on roughly half of Hynes’ pay packet, and is perhaps the best advertisement for overcoming adversity.
Before Josh Addo-Carr was pulled over and failed a roadside drugs test in which he was found to have cocaine in his system, Trindall faced the same drama this season, albeit with less fanfare. The Sharks, rightly, could have ripped up his contract. Fitzgibbon admitted to a few sleepless nights mulling what to do with Trindall, but at least in a football sense, he made the right call. His No.6 saved him from months of further sleepless nights.
Trying to put it nicely, when you look at Trindall, the last thing you would think he would be is an NRL player. At 25, his hair is backing up faster than it should, and his waist is nothing like the ones they print in the how-to-NRL manuals they give out to teenage prospects. But rugby league is for all types, and his type is a joy to watch.
In the first 40 minutes against the Cowboys, he won his team a penalty try, produced a no-flick pass for Cameron McInnes to score, which few would even contemplate, let alone pull off, soared into the air and contorted his body around the corner post like a modern-day NRL winger to touch down and then had a hand in the fourth of a blistering opening period.
Sione Katoa tries to catch a bomb.Credit: Getty Images
All the while, Hynes, sensibly, swallowed his ego.
But as with the Sharks and the finals, it’s never easy. The Cowboys scored the only three tries of the second half, but it always seemed like it was a bridge too far, perhaps only confirmed when Valentine Holmes crumpled in a heap on the turf with a few minutes left.
So, can the Sharks really trouble the Panthers next week? At the mid-way point of the season, when Cronulla was humming atop the ladder, a Nathan Cleary-less Penrith embarrassed the Sharks 42-0 in the Shire. They haven’t been the same since. Fitzgibbon won’t forget.
And maybe the NRL might have done them a favour, too.
The crowd of 19,124 at Allianz Stadium certainly was noisy enough, yet put in the shade by the Swans next door at the SCG. But say if Cronulla had won at PointsBet Stadium, where they wanted to play with a permanent construction zone and slightly dimmed lights, would have it really felt like a final? Like they had actually achieved something special?
It certainly wouldn’t have been a stage befitting of an occasion like this, or for a performance produced by Trindall. It’s his team now. Hynes knows that.
And maybe even the DJ does, too.
