KEEGAN’S TARGETS

He’s known as a firebrand and Keegan Hipgrave is determined to kickstart the Titans’ season, as Brent O’Neill writes

AS the Gold Coast Titans fight to stay in the NRL finals hunt against Cronulla tomorrow night, forward Keegan Hipgrave has identified his three main targets.

Desperate for their third win of the season after falling 28-14 to the Cowboys in Round 8, the Titans tackle the Sharks in the opening game of the NRL’s inaugural Magic Round at Suncorp Stadium.

“They’ve got a pretty solid pack so if we can dominate their pack I think our guys will just do the rest,” Hipgrave said.

“We’ve got a pretty good mindset right now to just stay simple, get into the grind of the game and just win those little cycles with our defence. It’s pretty simple, we’ve really gotten back to basics in the last couple of weeks.

“We took a lot out of last week. I think we played pretty well except for some minor individual lapses but we took a lot from it.

“We’re all sticking together and it’s not like everyone’s sulking at the club. We’re all upbeat and we know what we need to fix, we’ve just got to do it.”

The Titans’ must-win match has gotten even harder with skipper Tyrone Roberts (head knock) to miss the match. Kevin Proctor will instead lead the side.

Titans head of performance and culture Mal Meninga admitted “we’ve got to kick our season off again”.

Gold Coast (2-6) face a Cronulla side brimming with confidence following their narrow win over the Melbourne Storm last week.

Young gun AJ Brimson will take Roberts’ place in the halves while Jesse Arthars is set to make his NRL debut after being named at No.14.

JOSH DUGAN DUGAN’S A PRETTY STRONG CARRIER SO IF WE CAN GET A HOLD OF HIM IT WILL HELP US A LOT PAUL GALLEN IF WE CAN GET UNDER GALLEN’S SKIN AND ROLL HIM OVER, THAT’S PROBABLY A BIG ONE BRITON NIKORA HE’S A REALLY GOOD YOUNG SECOND-ROWER AND I USED TO PLAY WITH HIM AS A KID (AT NERANG ROOSTERS). HE’S COME A LONG WAY