Titans spoon claim
TITANS prop Jarrod Wallace has claimed the Gold Coast don’t deserve to finish the 2018 NRL season with the wooden spoon.
A promising season for the Titans in rookie coach Garth Brennan’s first year in charge has unravelled over the past month, with the Gold Coast plummeting into spoon contention.
The Titans have lost five of their past six matches to drop out of the finals race and are now sitting in the bottom four.
The 13th-placed Titans (16 points) are two points ahead of the Bulldogs, Eels and Cowboys with three rounds to play, where they will face Manly (12th), Melbourne (third) and North Queensland (last).
The final-round clash against the Cowboys at Cbus Super Stadium on Saturday, September 1 – Johnathan Thurston’s last NRL game – could double as a playoff for the dreaded wooden spoon.
Brennan took over from sacked coach Neil Henry this season after the Titans finished 15th last year and there was signs of life on the Gold Coast as they remained in finals contention with seven rounds left in the season.
But a string of losses has seen the Titans fall down the ladder at a rate of knots and they face erasing the good work done earlier in the season if they cannot salvage something in the final few rounds.
In his second season at the Titans, Queensland Origin prop Wallace said the club did not deserve to finish last.
“It would be devastating to
get the wooden spoon,” he said. “We don’t want it. We’ve worked too hard to be getting something like that.
“We don’t deserve it either. The boys are busting their butts. There have been a lot of games where we’ve missed out by one (point). The boys are trying hard every week.
“We’ve got a young team and we’re building. The last thing we want is our confidence being busted.
“It’s hard to cop but there’s always next year.”
Halfback Ash Taylor left yesterday’s training session early with hamstring tightness, clouding his availability for Friday night’s clash against Manly at Brookvale Oval.
Rookie AJ Brimson will start at fullback again in place of the injured Michael Gordon, whose dislocated wrist is expected to rule him out for the rest of the season.