Cronulla coach Craig Fitzgibbon adamant under fire halfback Nicho Hynes will respond against the Cowboys

Cronulla coach Craig Fitzgibbon has declared he’ll never pick a side based on what critics say but that under-fire halfback Nicho Hynes had to wear the responsibility of being a high-paid player while praising him for “owning” his poor first-up finals performance.

Teammates came out in support of Hynes after Penrith and NRL great Greg Alexander said he would have picked Braydon Trindall and Daniel Atkinson in the halves for Friday’s semi-final against the Cowboys after Hynes had a quiet game in Melbourne.

Cronulla has lost all four finals with Hynes, the 2022 Dally M medallist and his team’s $1m man, wearing the No.7 jersey.

Fitzgibbon though, who said criticism was adamant that Hynes was the man to “run our team” in their must-win semi-final clash against North Queensland as the Sharks look to avoid another straight-sets finals exit.

“I’ve heard it (the calls for Hynes to be dropped) but I won’t be picking a team based on what anyone else says,” Fitzgibbon said on Thursday.

“For the situation we are in, for Nicho and everyone else, the only way out for us is through it. We have to bunker down and get after it.”

Hynes revealed earlier this week that he had avoided social media in the wake of the poor showing against the Storm last Saturday as he fronted the media to address criticism.

Fitzgibbon said the criticism was part and parcel with becoming a high-profile, highly paid player and something Hynes, like others before him, would have to deal with.

“It’s happened to a lot of high-profile players - or I should say price-tag players - in the past, and halves in particular,” Fitzgibbon said.

“With that (price tag) comes responsibility and scrutiny.

“I think it’s confirmation bias - you see a couple of things that he hasn’t done, then it’s out there, it’s spoken about, but to prove yourself right, you constantly go to the things that he’s not doing well, and it just becomes like momentum.

“We all do it. Once you have a set of beliefs, we look for evidence to back that up and you just keep talking about it. But he does plenty of good stuff too, so focus on the good stuff and hopefully he gives us more of that.”

He said Hynes just needed to do his own job and “now everyone else’s” to help end Cronulla’s poor finals run.

“I think he showed by fronting up (to media) to show you he is dealing with stuff pretty well. He’s a lot better at all that,” he said.

“You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you don’t put him up, it creates more noise, the players have to field the questions on his behalf.

“I like the way he wanted to get up and own it and move on. He looks really good, trained really well yesterday.

“Pretty simply, he’s got to do his own job and not everyone else’s and run our team in conjunction with Tricky (Trindall).

“Our players have go to get their jobs done as well.”

Teammate Ronaldo Mulitalo was adamant that the Sharks were a “better team with Nicho in it”.

“And that’s all that matters. We all have his back,” he said.