Only one Tiger ran for more than 100m on Friday, the same feat 11 Sharks managed to accomplish.
Wests Tigers coach Benji Marshall has torn his side to shreds following a horror 58-6 defeat to Cronulla at Pointsbet Stadium. The Tigers had shown signs of life at the start of this year, but a third wooden spoon in a row is starting to look increasingly likely as each round passes.
The joint venture club has conceded 138 points in their past three games against top-four sides and on Friday they were completely outplayed and out-hustled by a Sharks side that had lost five of its past six NRL matches and were without star halfback Nicho Hynes. Following the match the rookie boss went nuclear, calling out the players’ poor attitude as a damning stat revealed just how far behind the eight ball the club is in effort areas.
“I’ve got to apologise to our fans,” he said. “When you take the field, you’ve got to choose the right attitude, and tonight they ran harder and tackled way harder than us and it showed on the scoreboard.
“We haven’t seen that (lack of attitude) all year. If it was a weekly occurrence then I’d probably know more, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it this year. There’s no one in our team that could say they played well.”
“When you take the field, you’ve got to take the right attitude with how hard you want to tackle and how hard you want to run. They ran harder and tackled harder than us and had way more energy than us.”
