Nicho Hynes has confirmed there has been a slight change to his frame as he tries to change Cronulla‘s fortunes from consistent finalists into premiership winners.
Since Craig Fitzgibbon started as coach in 2022, the Sharks have finished 2nd, 6th, 4th and 5th but haven’t gone past a preliminary final.
As the halfback, Hynes has been the main man for all those seasons, but hasn’t been able to deliver the side to the promised land.
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To address any shortcomings in the halves, the 29-year-old has decided to add to his size.
“I feel like I could take my game to a better level if I carried an extra kilogram of muscle and take the line on a bit more than I have over the previous years,” he said on 9news Sydney.
“That’s a strength of mine and I want to play to my strengths and hopefully I can do that.”
Hynes finished last year with his lowest average running metres since the 2020 season with Melbourne when he played 11 matches.
Overall he ran for more metres last year than he did the previous season though, finishing with 2,417.
On the other side of his game, Hynes stated that last year was his “best defensive year”, having tackled at 91.15 per cent efficiency.
That season he finished with the most tackles he’s made on 628. His previous best was 514 in that first year with the Sharks.
Hynes promised his defence will only get better.
“That’s what I’ve built my game off,” he said.
“That got me into games and I feel like a lot of teams target the halves and I was making up to 30 tackles a game sometimes and I want to make sure every single time a back-rower ran at me that I was making it, and they felt it as well.”
Hynes confirmed he will play for the Indigenous All-Stars vs Maori All-Stars on February 15.