Aware of the perception that they are seen as a one-man band, tough-talking prop Braden Hamlin-Uele would love nothing more than to prove his side are not just “the Cronulla Nicho Hynes Sharks”.
When the 2022 Dally M Medal-winning halfback went down with an ankle injury a fortnight ago, Cronulla’s hopes of hanging onto a top-four spot began to look slim.
But after a last-start 58-6 shellacking of Wests Tigers, the Sharks’ record without their star No.7 has been brought back into focus with Braydon Trindall and Daniel Atkinson sharing playmaking duties.
With Hynes, who is due back in the side for the penultimate round of the season, the Sharks boast a 8-5 record in 2024.
But without him they are 3-1 and along the way they have claimed some impressive scalps.
Craig Fitzgibbon’s side downed last year’s grand finalists Brisbane on the road, remain the only team to knock off ladder-leading Melbourne at AAMI Park and claimed their biggest victory of the season against the Tigers two weeks ago.
The Sharks’ record without Hynes is all the more impressive considering the likes of Canberra (Jamal Fogarty), Brisbane (Adam Reynolds), the Warriors (Shaun Johnson) and Parramatta (Mitchell Moses) have all struggled for results when their star playmakers have been absent.
It’s why ahead of Saturday’s trip to Townsville to face the North Queensland Cowboys, Hamlin-Uele is relishing the chance to continue debunking the theory that the Sharks’ fortunes revolve around Hynes.
"Nicho is a big part of our team and the success we’ve had," Hamlin-Uele said.
"Holding up that trophy has been out of our grasp and the stigma around us and finals series hasn’t been great, but without Nicho we wouldn’t have got there.
"Everyone that comes into our team is there to do a job and it’s given Daniel Atkinson the chance to show what he's capable of.
"We all love Nicho but this whole thing of us being the Cronulla Nicho Hynes Sharks is unfair to us, but also to him because there’s 16 other guys who are out there with him.
"We're the Cronulla Sharks, we're not one player and the rest.
"People will always have opinions … but opinions are just someone's thoughts so we'll let them have those thoughts and we'll go about our business."
Cronulla, positioned third heading into round 21, will hand 19-year-old fullback Liam Ison his NRL debut and have have won 11 of their past 12 games against the eighth-placed Cowboys.
