With a combined 749 NRL games of experience lost with three key departures, you’d be forgiven for thinking life around Shark Park – especially on game day – will be drastically different in 2020.
Not so.
The Sharks' brand of footy – tough, uncompromising, a grapple more than a symphony – is bigger than the departures of premiership winners Paul Gallen (348 NRL games), Matt Prior (253 NRL games) and Sosaia Feki (148 NRL games), according to second-year Shark Shaun Johnson.
Fronting up for pre-season a month earlier than his Test duties required him to, Johnson has had an extended look into what the post-Gallen era looks like at Cronulla (and, for home games, Netstrata Jubilee Oval).
Spoiler alert: the Wade Graham-led Sharks won’t be too much different.
"A sign of a tough or resilient club isn't in one or two players. It's never in one person, two people, three people, it's in the walls, it's everywhere, it's in the grass, it's in the water,” he told Sporting News.
"The resilience the group showed last year, with all the injuries we had, to find ourselves in the finals - I was sitting there like, 'This is what I want to be doing'.
"Clubs face what we had to face last year, they're not making finals. There were games there where we had players that only we would know in the sheds went out there busted.”
Although injuries and form forced Cronulla coach John Morris to give six players their debuts in 2019, the Sharks were still able to use the equal-fewest players throughout the year with 26.
While plenty of Sharks regulars limped through games last year, it was the quality of players that were missing that cruelled a once-promising season.
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In late April, Johnson was staring down the barrel of four weeks on the sideline after tearing his hamstring against the Broncos, joining Matt Moylan, Aaron Woods, Wade Graham and Josh Dugan on the sidelines.
In a roundabout way, the pain of 2019 has helped eased the Sharks into their new era, with a host of promising young talents entering season 2020 already with NRL game time.
"It's been a lot different [this pre-season]. Hearing Ronaldo speak up there, it's hard to believe he's only 20," Johnson said after joining Sharks winger Ronaldo Mulitalo onstage to talk to school children in the Sutherland Shire about respect. "Having that confidence of playing in the NRL, coming round second year, he knows what it's about. It's been really good for our group in general.
"We've got another young crop of kids coming through as well,” Johnson said. “It's going to be a continuous cycle. I think for these boys, the Bronson Xerri’s, the Blayke Brailey’s, the Briton Nikora’s, they know what it's about so they're going to be firing.
"They're helping us drive that, they're vocal with how they speak but most importantly they show it through their actions.”
The extended pre-season – and the changing cast of characters – has given Johnson a far more settled preparation than he experienced in 2019, shortly after moving across the ditch from the Warriors.
"If you just think where I was this time last year, I'm so far ahead,” he said. “Last year I was still trying to find furniture for my house, putting in maps [to find] how to get to Shark Park.
"Now, I'm settled. I've got my wife over, I've got familiar with the club, the surroundings, the boys, the standards, the culture at the club - everything just feels a lot more comfortable.
"I'm able just to apply myself to my trade and really get stuck into the work.”
The Sharks will kick off their season against South Sydney on Saturday, March 14.
