The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks are one step closer to securing a home final in week one, beating the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs 16-0 in an uneventful affair at Pointsbet Stadium.
It was a scrappy and ill-disciplined start from both teams, with the Sharks finishing the first-half with a 56% completion rate and struggling to take advantage of a mountain of early field position as a result.
The Bulldogs defence was valiant, but they were only able to hold out Cronulla for so long, with Briton Nikora eventually crashing over in the 17th minute courtesy of a nice short pass from Matt Moylan.
In their set immediately after points, the Sharks were able to roll up the field with ease and gain momentum. When Matt Moylan held his cutout pass long enough to avoid the Addo-Carr intercept, Ronaldo Mulitalo crashed over basically untouched and it looked as though the Sharks would open the floodgates.
It wasn't to be however, despite completely lopsided first half stats in favour of Cronulla (25 tackle breaks to 10 as an example), the home team were unable to add to their total and would go into half-time only up 10 points to nil.
The Sharks main instruction from Coach Fitzgibbon at half-time was to keep it simple and complete their sets, but they did everything but that in the opening stages, dropping the ball multiple times. Despite that, they were able to easily defend the Bulldogs multiple attacking raids.
With the Bulldogs not firing a single shot in attack and the Sharks only completing at 60%, the game was extremely unentertaining, and that's probably putting it lightly. The Bulldogs, despite completing 31 sets from 38, couldn't manage a single line-break and were out-gained by over 300 metres. The final tackle break stats were even more uneven, the Sharks making 56 to the Bulldogs 19.
Despite all of this, the Sharks were only able to manage one extra try in the second half that came in the 65th minute, when Hynes identified Addo-Carr out of position and put in an early kick for Mulitalo, who made no mistake with the pickup and scored under the posts.
The Sharks attack wasn't inspiring, but holding the Bulldogs to nil is something that Fitzgibbon will be happy with, especially considering Canterbury had 52% of the ball.
Next week, the Sharks head to Newcastle and will know before kickoff whether a win will get them into second spot on the table. The Bulldogs will host the Sea Eagles on Friday at 6pm in perhaps the most Friday 6pm game of all time.