The shark alarm is ringing at Cronulla with the danger on the horizon that they look like being one of those teams that was very good for a few years, but not quite good enough to go all the way. 

This season, and perhaps next year, represent the Sharks’ best chances of adding a second premiership to the club’s dusty trophy cabinet. 

The nucleus of this team is in the prime of their career and that doesn’t last forever.

Forward leader Addin Fonua-Blake is at the peak of his powers, turning 30 in the off-season and the majority of this Cronulla side has been together since Craig Fitzgibbon took the coaching reins at the start of 2022. 

This year’s premiership race is much more wide open than the past few seasons when the Panthers and Storm were, for the most part, head and shoulders above the rest.

Getting to a grand final is tough, as evidenced by the fact that the Storm, after winning in 2020, have only been back there once, last October, and even then they were no match for the Panthers juggernaut as Ivan Cleary’s team racked up a fourth premiership on the trot. 

The Panthers are all but out of the premiership race this time around, and will have to defy the overwhelming weight of history to come from the back of the field and go all the way after a terrible 1-5 start to the season. 

Melbourne are deserved competition favourites, but they have not been as clinical as past seasons, which has been an ongoing concern for coach Craig Bellamy who will have a relatively short space of time after the Origin period to navigate the twin tasks of getting his rep stars a rest, but also getting his team firing in all cylinders before the finals. 

Canterbury, Canberra and the Warriors are as good a chance as any team of breaking through for the title after lengthy trophy droughts. 

The Warriors are still in search of their first premiership since joining the big league in 1995 while the Raiders have not been kingpins since the end of their golden era the previous season and the Bulldogs have been waiting since 2004 to get their paws on the trophy. 

Cronulla should be on a trajectory of going from a good to great team this year after putting up a decent effort before going down to Penrith in the preliminary final last season.

Nicholas Hynes. (Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images)

The addition of Fonua-Blake was viewed as the missing muscle needed up front to enable their point-scoring threats out wide the necessary room to move.

But the Sharks have been patchy all season long, reflected by their 7-6 record heading into Thursday night’s showdown with derby rivals St George Illawarra. 

The nucleus of their team, halves Nicho Hynes and Brayden Trindall, Jesse Ramien, Ronaldo Mulitalo and Will Kennedy out wide, hooker Blayke Brailey and Briton Nikora and Oregon Kaufusi are in that sweet spot of an NRL player’s career.

They have all played at least five seasons, sufficient experience to know what’s required to compete with the best before reaching the tail end of their careers.

Hynes and Trindall showed glimpses of excellence last year in their first decent stretch of games together but this time around they have failed to consolidate their combination. 

A tendency to shuffle the ball onwards too much has resulted in Hynes’ effectiveness dropping dramatically from his breakout year of 2022 when he won the Dally M and got the Sharks just one game shy of the grand final.

The Sharks are starting to resemble teams like the North Sydney Bears in the 1990s, Parramatta the following decade and the Eels again in recent years during Brad Arthur’s reign – one that is capable of making the finals several times in a row but was never capable of landing knockout blows on heavyweight opponents.

Sharks coach Craig Fitzgibbon. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Cronulla have gone down to the Dogs, Raiders and Warriors with their upset 31-26 triumph over the Storm last month reversing their trend of buckling against top-four opponents.

They were dreadful last Saturday in their 40-10 loss at home to the Warriors, following on from a 42-16 drubbing at the hands of an Origin-depleted Roosters squad.

Sharks coach Craig Fitzgibbon was renowned for his relentless effort as a player and he has instilled similar traits in his team but physical fitness and commitment can take a team only so far.

“Prior to the last two weeks, we’ve been in every game we’ve played,” Fitzgibbon told reporters on Wednesday.

“There’s not been a single performance prior to that where we weren’t competitive and playing the way I wanted to play.

“I won’t flinch, I believe in what I believe in. The game leaves clues and you are constantly learning, constantly trying to stay consistent in what you believe in so the team can stay consistent.”

They are fifth on the ladder so it’s by no means time to panic but the gulf between the top four sides and the rest of the competition this year is so big that Donald Trump would try to rename it.

Time is running out for this iteration of the roster to show they can prove their critics wrong before the club will have to start thinking they need to overhaul the personnel. 

They can’t continue to put the same players on the park as they get older and expect them to suddenly make the hardest leap in the NRL, from pretender to contender status.