{"id":113863,"date":"2025-09-02T19:22:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T19:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/113863\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T19:22:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T19:22:14","slug":"shark-park-might-be-a-dive-but-for-nicho-hynes-its-home-sweet-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/113863\/","title":{"rendered":"Shark Park might be a dive, but for Nicho Hynes it\u2019s home, sweet home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cronulla\u2019s attachment to Shark Park should be no surprise given their record of eight wins from 10 games at home this season. Sunday\u2019s 40-16 dissection of Newcastle<\/a> was their sixth victory in a row in their own backyard.<\/p>\n

Even though it can\u2019t accommodate the numbers of the bigger arenas, fans are close to the action and Hynes said that generated a great atmosphere for players.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The portaloos are a game-day feature on the hill at Shark Park.Credit: Neil Breen\/SMH<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love packing it out here and especially daytime footy, our fans turn up and we really enjoy it, so hopefully they can turn up for us over the next couple of weeks too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As well as home ground advantage, the Sharks can earn a potential second chance in week one of the finals if they qualify for the top four, which will entail beating the Bulldogs and relying on Melbourne to beat fourth-placed Brisbane at Suncorp Stadium on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve set out from the pre-season to get into the top four, and we\u2019ve got one more chance to try and get that, so we\u2019ll be going in guns blazing this week,\u201d Hynes said.<\/p>\n

Cronulla have featured in the play-offs every season since Hynes joined the club from Melbourne in 2022, progressing to a preliminary final last season. The former Dally M medallist had no doubt those experiences would be beneficial this time around.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like we\u2019ve learnt from each final series, \u201922 and \u201823 and obviously \u201924,\u201d he said. \u201cWe ended up going to a prelim last year, and unfortunately we lost to the Panthers. No one\u2019s beaten the Panthers in a prelim in the last five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo yeah, it\u2019s going to be a challenge, but we\u2019ll just take what we\u2019ve learnt over the last couple of years and play the game style we\u2019re playing and not go out of our system.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that in the Panthers game last year, we went a bit out of our system and played into their hands. So we need to just keep doing what we know, and worry about us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

Cronulla are on the seventh line of betting with the bookmakers, paying $19 to win the title, and Hynes was happy to keep flying under the radar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor sure,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re always the underdogs here. No one gives us anything, everyone counts us out, so we\u2019re looking forward to the challenge and going to the semi-finals underdogs like we always do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The big difference in Cronulla\u2019s squad this year is prime mover Addin Fonua-Blake, whom Hynes said had been \u201chuge\u201d since arriving from the Warriors at the end of last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s made a massive difference all year with us,\u201d Hynes said. \u201cHopefully he can continue to have that form over the next couple of weeks, but everyone needs to pick up and play to a high standard as well as him.\u201d<\/p>\n

NRL is live and free on Channel 9 & 9Now<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Chammas and Andrew \u201cJoey\u201d Johns dissect the upcoming NRL round, plus the latest footy news, results and analysis. Sign up for the Sin Bin newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cronulla\u2019s attachment to Shark Park should be no surprise given their record of eight wins from 10 games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-113863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}