Canberra Raiders coach Ricky Stuart has unloaded on his players after they squandered an 18-0 lead against the Sharks to lose 36-22.
Cronulla came into the match significantly understrength with Stuart stating "that was half of Newtown in there" in reference to the Sharks' feeder side.
In a stinging assessment of his team, Stuart referred to them as "embarrassing" and "dismal" after they blew an opportunity to go top of the table.
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"I think we probably played a patch of 12 or 14 minutes of half-decent football, outside of that we were embarrassing," he said.
"It was awful and we've worked too hard in the off-season, that's not us but tonight it was … we've changed a lot of those real bad habits that crept in there tonight and that's what I've got to deal with now and get back out of us, we've started the season really well and that was dismal."
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The Raiders coach went on to say the performance "will be dealt with", and when pressed on his meaning behind that suggested there could be players dropped.
"There might be changes, but it was a performance that every individual out there were below par," he said.
Despite a lack of star performers, Raiders centre Matthew Timoko did provide some glimpses of spark, while James Schiller scored a double.
However, Stuart wasn't in the mood for praising any players when asked on the performance of Timoko.
"Nobody was solid tonight, there wasn't a player in our team that was solid," he said.
"Don't be giving praise to people who don't deserve it."
Despite stating he was unable to put his finger on what went wrong for the side, one notable shift for the Raiders came when starting props Joseph Tapine and Josh Papalii left the field. Corey Horsburgh and Pasami Saulo were the two players replacing them.
The Sharks' first try came when Papalii left the field in the 20th minute, while another two were added when Tapine departed after 29 minutes.
Stuart conceded there was a definite impact on the performance from those changes.
"We lost everything, we lost momentum, the whole game changed," he said.
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