The Sharks are making do with amenities from a bygone era<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cSo for every other club that has one, that\u2019s a little one on us, but in saying that, we don\u2019t walk around sooking about it. We don\u2019t walk around whinging about it,\u201d Fitzgibbon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to finish a year and go on and whine about it because we don\u2019t have one. But do we want one? Absolutely \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to shy away from it. But we\u2019re still happy at Shark Park. We love it here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cronulla 2016 premiership-winning captain Paul Gallen, who still works for the club as a coaching consultant, agrees they deserve better facilities.<\/p>\n
But he added: \u201cI think if you\u2019re training in a tough, hard, rugged environment, you play tough, hard and rugged footy, and that\u2019s what the Sharks are about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gallen made the point that this group of players \u201cknow each other inside out\u201d but might not be together much longer, so now is as good a time as any to realise their potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want your best players playing well at the back end of the year and being fit and healthy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if they can get that happening, then they\u2019re a big chance. They\u2019re a very settled team and they\u2019ve been in the finals four years in a row.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those four years were under \u201cFitzy\u201d, who was unaware that Wayne Bennett, Craig Bellamy and Des Hasler took five seasons to win their first titles with Brisbane, Melbourne and Manly respectively. A good omen perhaps?<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if those coaches will be wanting their omens to rub off on me too much,\u201d he said with a wry smile.<\/p>\n
The straight-shooting Fitzgibbon might not place much stock in superstition, or sentiment, but he knows the value of disappointment.<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had to learn via pain, to be perfectly honest,\u201d he said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t had in our squad anyone who\u2019s won a premiership. We didn\u2019t have any Origin players, for big-game experience, when I came here.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Jesse Ramien was the only player who actually, prior to \u201924, had won a semi.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo all of our learnings have come the hard way by exposure and experience of what semi-finals are about.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019ve had four years of that and then the first two were filled with pain, and then the last two have been improvements at the highest end of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we\u2019ve got to get back to a level we know we\u2019re at and we\u2019ve also got to time our run. But there\u2019s a lot of footy that we\u2019re going to pass under the bridge before we get anywhere close to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since he took the helm at Cronulla in 2022, after an apprenticeship at the Roosters, the former NSW…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-434394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434394","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=434394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Cronulla](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/54c66e4848389fec37b3b1728651dc44a7948fd5.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Sharks](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/e6bc1e05ffd9b32702b33b35cdffbe94e992d90f.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n