THE Cronulla Sharks attacked from the opening whistle, scoring two early tries which set up an 18-10 victory over the Gold Coast Titans in front of a packed house at C.ex Coffs International Stadium last Saturday.

Sione Kotoa opened the scoring after eleven minutes when the Sharks penetrated through the middle and moved the ball out wide for Kotoa to dive over the line.

Five minutes later, a rejuvenated Matt Moylan elusively weaved through the Titans defence to score the second try with Nicho Hynes converting the kick.

This was the catalyst for the Titans to immediately strike back with tries for Beau Fermor and Greg Marzhew to square the match 10-10 at halftime.

Five minutes into the second half Blayke Brailey scored the decisive try as he dived over for the Sharks before Nicho Hynes converted the kick.

As the match wore on, Hynes seemingly put the match out of reach of the Titans with a drop goal, forcing the Titans to score twice.

In a barnstorming last five minutes the Titans threw everything at the Sharks, scoring a late try.

Any hope of a comeback was thwarted however, when the bunker ruled out the try for an 18-10 Sharks win.

The final whistle was a sigh of relief for coach Craig Fitzgibbon with the Sharks nudging themselves back into the top four.

“If you look at the table, and you assume it’s a given that you’re just going to win because of the position, it’s not like that, the footy is just too hard,” he said.

“The Titans will find a way and win some games, that’s a good footy team.

“It’s so, so hard to get everything right, we’ve been away now for a couple of weeks now, we came straight from Brisbane down to Coffs and maybe we didn’t get part of our prep right or there were too many distractions during the week etc.

“But we had to find a way against a committed opponent and yeah, it wasn’t pretty but we got it done.”

After an inconsistent streak of wins and losses, Fitzgibbon was pleased to restore order with back to back victories.

“Yeah, our consistency levels we’re obviously working on, there’s a lot of new stuff coming into the club, a lot of new stuff that we’re trying to get right,” he said.

“I think we’ve had periods where we’ve shown our capabilities and then periods of inconsistency but we’ve got a lot more left.

“We think we’re hard to defend at times and we let teams off the hook with pressure and then we defend well at times and we let them off with discipline.

“So we’ll keep working on putting those two elements together and mounting more pressure, and we’ve got more gears.”

In his first year at the Sharks, Fitzgibbon missed last year’s trip to the Coffs Coast and was impressed with what he saw.

“The boys came here last year obviously, it’s been great, really welcoming.

“The players carried themselves in the community really well, represented the club well, which is important for the game that we do that.

“It will hopefully get a few more fans back next year,” said Fitzgibbon.

Coffs Harbour’s Locky Miller is waiting in the wings following a dream debut last month but without any injuries and players in good form, Fitzgibbon isn’t picking a team based on emotion.

“Look, it’s tough because I really like what Locky is doing and tough because he’s a great kid and he’s just worked hard and he’s a valued member of the squad but I can’t pick a team on sentiments.

“Will (Kennedy) is our fullback and Will is very important to the way we play and at the moment he is fulfilling his role.

“But Will also knows that if he doesn’t then Locky is ready to go.

“Locky came up this week and trained with us all week, he got to see his family which is important, but Locky and young Kade Dykes, there’s two good players there and Will knows he has to perform because they’re ready to go.”

By David WIGLEY