NT Titans doing the hard yards ahead of army clash

THE NT Titans development squad will clash with an Army XIII today in Darwin to conclude their off-season training schedule.

After tasting success against South Australia and Victoria at the Combined Affiliated States tournament in June, first-year coach George Brown wanted to keep momentum rolling post-season.

He has done so by pushing the next crop of talent into the Territory representative system.

“The idea of this program is to bring identified players into the senior Titans program,” Brown told the NT News.

“It’s to open them up to how we perform and what our standards are. The main thing we are trying to foster is attitude.”

Brown and NRL NT pathways manager Duncan Mac- Gillivray have conducted three sessions a week for three weeks, emphasising agility, speed, technique and recovery.

“We’ve got a game (today) against an army side that will bring this program to a close for us,” Brown said.

“The expectation is the boys keep training in the off-season with the techniques we have shown them.

“We will come together early next year and identify whether we need to do this again when the season starts.”

Brown said he was confident the NT could rise and challenge Western Australia.

“It’s not a huge gap. We are behind, but WA’s biggest strength is they have a bigger competition with more teams,” he said.

“We are trying to get to their level and the extra game today should help in trying to close that gap.”