Finals hopes gone as Titans fade away
THE 80 minutes of football that ultimately cost the Titans their season, could also sum up their year.
Gold Coast’s chances of making the NRL finals in 2017 are dead, with the club’s 26-4 loss to the Wests Tigers last night costing them the slim chance they had of making the eight.
While they had players out and the bounce of the ball didn’t go their way, the Titans were their own worst enemies.
A penalty on the fifth tackle, a call made by a touch judge on a block play seen every week, dropped ball, missed tackles – everything that could go wrong for the Titans yesterday did.
Basic handling errors and poor discipline and defence cost them, as it has all season.
Gold Coast needed to win all six of their final games to have any chance of making a late run to the finals.
But those hopes were dashed last night by a team lacking any continuity, imagination, or, it seemed, effort.
That’s rarely said about the Titans but as the margin blew out in the second half, so did the intensity. Then frustration set in.
“We’re really disappointed because there was everything to play for and we weren’t even able to get into the game,” coach Neil Henry said.
“That score is a true reflection of the game, we were outenthused from start to finish.
“We weren’t willing to do what we needed to do today.
“We were playing for everything here.
“A home game against a team that’s been struggling, where there was a chance to play finals football and that’s gone – we didn’t play like a team that was playing for that opportunity.”
Gold Coast were lucky to trail just 4-0 at half-time but any effort to turn things around in the second half petered out as quickly as the Titans chant the 11,516 fans at Cbus Super Stadium attempted to start. The Tigers scored four tries to one in the second term, and while James Tedesco’s effort to get a toe to a ball he dropped may have been little more than a fluke, the Titans had no answers to the hunger of a team languishing near the bottom of the ladder.
Coach Neil Henry decided on a reshuffle of the backline announced earlier in the week, pushing Tyrone Roberts to fullback and Jarryd Hayne into the centres in place of John Olive, with Kane Elgey coming into the starting side at five-eighth.
Elgey and Dale Copley were exposed almost immediately on the left side, with the Tigers centre Esan Marsters crossing in the opening minutes after the Titans handed their opponents a fifth-tackle penalty.
Both teams were denied tries through obstructions in the opening term and the Tigers took just a four-point lead to the break but it was through good luck, more than good management from the Titans, who were poor in almost every facet of the game.
Nothing improved after the break either.
The Tigers scored twice in the 10 minutes after oranges, first through a miraculous effort from Tedesco, who looked to have knocked the ball on but managed to get his boot to it before it hit the ground, then Malakai Watene-Zelezniak, as the score blew out to 14-0.
The Titans received some hope when Hayne crossed in the 52nd minute but they were
unable to trouble the scorers again, with the Tigers scoring twice more, through Chris Lawrence and Aaron Woods.
“I thought we could turn it around at half-time but you need to back up words with actions and that didn’t happen today,” Henry said.
“We can make excuses for stuff, we had to change our team around … but that’s just taking the gloss off (the Tigers’) performance.
“The reality is we had 17 players that were outplayed today. There’s still enough in the team to say that’s a result we just had to get today.
“And for whatever reason, through lack of commitment to get it done collectively, we weren’t good enough.”
Henry said the club’s challenge now was to be competitive for the final five rounds of the season.
The Titans now have nothing tangible to play for this year but could take a leaf out of the book of the Tigers, whose captain Aaron Woods said plenty was on the line each week.
“If we can go out and knock teams off, that’s a big plus for us,” Woods said.
That was echoed by Titans captain Ryan James, who was bitterly disappointed at knowing the team’s 2017 season was done and dusted.
“It was a day we had to put it all out there and just give it our all and now we just have to play for pride in the jersey and what we’re about,” he said.
“Hopefully next week we come out firing against the Broncos.”