Will Kennedy celebrates a Sharks try on Easter Sunday.Getty ImagesKennedy’s shaved pate was impossible to miss in the afternoon sunshine as he scythed through the Warriors twice in the space of four minutes – scoring his first when Trindall held the defensive line up and his second from a well-worked scrum play.
The fullback had to take a reduced one-year deal to stay in Cronulla colours for this season and is one of more than a dozen first-graders coming off-contract at the Sharks.
You wouldn’t know it based on his start to the season,and he told reporters on Sunday that he is open to moving on if a rival club trumps Cronulla with an offer for 2027 and beyond.
“I’ll do whatever is best for my family. I just had a newborn,so it was only right for me to stay that one more year here,” Kennedy said of his current one-year deal.
Dallin Watene-Zelezniak scores his third try against the Sharks.Getty Images“I want to keep playing footy. If I stay here,happy days. I love this club. But if I have to do what’s best for my family then I have to do it.”
Trindall underlined his status as one of the game’s form halves after he and Nicho Hynes repeatedly skewered the Warriors defence.
A 24-10 halftime lead was deserved given the Sharks’ ascendancy and willingness to play expansively despite pre-game drizzle.
Dallin Watene-Zelezniak’s hat-trick kept the Warriors just about within reach in the first stanza – particularly a 90-metre intercept that would have produced another Sharks try had the veteran winger not latched onto it.
But with KL Iro also muscling his way onto the scoresheet and Billy Burns also charging over from a Hynes short ball,the Sharks were never truly worried by an out-of-sorts Warriors side.
Coach Craig Fitzgibbon was miffed by a 10-1 penalty count against his side,but chuffed nonetheless with Cronulla’s ability to weather early setbacks and regular pinging of the whistle.
“The most pleasing thing was whatever was going against us in the run of the game,I didn’t think we flinched,we kept going,” Fitzgibbon said.
“We haven’t won[a penalty count] this year,but we’ve got to look at why that keeps happening... I’m not sure what’s happening there. They probably were penalties,they might be fair. But if we’re dominating we might have more than a penalty in a game.”