The Stat to Fix: Five-minute windows that cruel Cronulla

NRL.com Stats has crunched the numbers to pin-point the area each team must fix in 2018. The Cronulla Sharks need to remove their habit of slacking off for short stretches to have a chance of returning to premiership glory in 2018.

Cronulla proved tough to beat as always in 2017, but they did help their opponents out in a couple of periods that you could almost set your watch to.

Two five-minute periods for the Sharks – from the 15-20 minute mark of the first half and the first five minutes after the break – led to them registering 22 and 23 errors in each respective timeframe.

In both five-minute stretches, those error counts were well above the NRL averages of 14 and 15 in the same period.

The proof ended up in the pudding, with higher fatigue levels – a result of dropped ball and the extra defence that entails – resulting in 64% of Cronulla's tries conceded coming in the back end of half.