After spending the past three games serving an NRL suspension for a horror hit on Kalyn Ponga, Cronulla halfback Chad Townsend has learned a thing or two.

Not just about what went wrong that day in Newcastle but about how to pick apart his own team.

Unable to train with the Sharks for the past three weeks, Townsend switched to the seconds team for scrimmages and treated every session like it was game day.

He was able to plot and scheme, executing a game plan against his first-grade teammates and expose their weaknesses in defence.

Heading into their elimination against Canberra on Saturday, the education was invaluable.

“For me, I treated this day as game day and I really wanted to go out there and execute our second team’s game plan,” Townsend said on Wednesday.

“We went well actually, we scored a few tries, got a few wins against the first team, so I’m very happy with that.

“There was definitely spots I feel like I can add value to our team, watching and defending our firsts team and seeing how they play and I’ve spoken to the coaching staff about those things and we’ll try and implement those things this weekend.

“I feel like it’s made me a better player by trying to understand our team a bit more too.”

For those three weeks he sat in spine meetings, offering his opinion when needed and hoping his teammates could pull through to make the finals.

It was touch and go there, particularly against the Warriors in round 18 – a game the Sharks had to win to secure their spot in the top eight.

“The hardest thing about being suspended was feeling like I’ve let my teammates down when we were still fighting for a spot in the finals and for me that hurt the most,” Townsend said.

“The fact that they did a really good job in getting us into the finals gives me a chance to come back and play and spurs me on to play well this weekend.”

The Warriors win was their only success of the final three games, which included a crushing 34-18 loss to the Sydney Roosters that ended the season of halves star Shaun Johnson.

A ruptured achilles tendon took out Johnson, who still tops the league with 23 try assists for the year despite playing just 16 games.

A win against the Raiders in Canberra would be a continuation of the good work Johnson did to get the Sharks into the finals.

“He’s been our best player all year, our most consistent player,” Townsend said.

“To lose him is very heartbreaking for our team and we’ll miss him.”