Jarome Luai denied his contract call was a distraction, while Benji Marshall fumed at his side’s lack of effort in the Tigers’ horror 52-10 loss to the Sharks in Round 9.
The Tigers had only lost two games all season heading into the clash by a total of five points, but were blown off the park by a Sharks side in a stern reality check for Marshall’s team.
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Luai was blunt when asked if it was hard to get up for the game after a big week for the PNG Chiefs signing.
“It was easy,” Luai said.
Pressed on whether his contract call was a distraction for him or his teammates Luai was emphatic.
“No,” Luai said.
Marshall also refused to use Luai’s contract call as an excuse for his side’s poor display.
“We’ve had things that have been distractions all year to be fair, so it’s no excuse,” Marshall said.
“If anything, I probably need to look at from a coaching point of view, what I did during the week, that made us change our mindset and the way we want to play.
“The buck starts and stops with me, so I need to figure that out and go and really look deep into it.
“But I know with my team, we can turn it around pretty quickly, but we’re just going to have to hurt and go through that and learn.”
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Marshall conceded his side got taught a lesson by a ruthless Sharks outfit.
“There’s no commiserations, it’s just unacceptable, really,” Marshall said.
“Like I just said to our players, we’ve worked so hard on certain standards of the way we want to play our footy and I thought we got taught a lesson by a classy side tonight on how to run hard, how to tackle hard, and how to win the field position and apply pressure. And we got dominated, completely dominated.”
However, Marshall was disappointed his side lacked the drive to defend their errors.
“Last week we were in a similar position and we had a plan for the second half that we actually came out and paid a price for,” Marshall said.
“Today we came out in the second half and did the exact opposite and I thought we tried to play soft to try and win, instead of actually trying to play physically.
“And I thought they were relentless with their pressure. I think we had like 20 per cent possession in the second half, you can’t win a game. But I can’t accept things that revolve around effort. Footy, mistakes I can accept, but effort, no.”
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Marshall was pressed on how a team that has been defensively one of the best in the competition could dish up such a poor effort against Cronulla in that department.
“It’s way different, if you look at our two losses before, we lost by one and we lost by four and we never gave up in those games,” Marshall said.
“And we dominated field position and played the way we wanted to play. Today was, I don’t know what team was out there, but that wasn’t the team that we’ve played like and prepared like, it was actually the opposite.
“So I’m not gonna make any excuses, it’s credit to them, because they were relentless with the way they played.
“I thought their halves really kicked well for them, and I thought their middles ran a lot harder than what we did, so it’s a good lesson for us.”
Marshall conceded his team got a stark reality check and need to get back to work and look at what went wrong in their preparation.
“The thing with NRL, it’s hard and you’ve got to pay a price physically every week, week in, week out, and mistakes are going to happen,” Marshall said.
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“But what I like is how the perception has changed that we’re a better team and we are better than the way we played tonight, and people are actually sort of expecting us to win.
“That wasn’t there before, so we just have got to get back to playing the footy that works for us on both sides of the ball and defensively, that’s the most disappointing thing because that’s not us.”
Luai conceded his players need to be brutal in reviewing their own performances, himself included.
“It just probably comes down to a bit of resilience there,” Luai said.
“As Benji said, we can accept errors, it’s what we do after that. We didn’t really defend our try line, so a bit of a reality check for us. It’s time to put our egos aside and walk towards next week in review.
“It starts tomorrow, it starts in review. We take ownership and accountability of the way we performed tonight and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The loss was made worse by injuries to Adam Doueihi (shoulder) and Samuela Fainu (foot), which could test the Tigers’ depth in the coming weeks.
“His shoulder dislocated and they put it back in, so he’ll get a scan tomorrow,” Marshall said of Doueihi.
“I’m unsure of the time, but we’ve had a couple of those, so it’s probably around four weeks, maybe six.
“Samuela has a foot issue, so he’s gonna get a scan tomorrow, so not sure on that one.”
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