Titans secure dream team
THE Titans have locked up a third of the champion Palm Beach Currumbin schoolboy outfit, with the club’s new development system ensuring the region’s best talent is under the eyes of the Gold Coast.
Strike centres Will Evans and Noah Gafa are contracted to the Titans, along with fellow backs Indiha Sao Tui-Huta and Caleb Hodges and bench player Solomon Torrens, while the club is chasing secondrower Juwan Compain, previously aligned with Brisbane.
While Tui-Huta, Hodges and Torrens would once have come solely under the Tweed banner, with the Titans just keeping an eye on their development, they are now part of the Titans’ program and will trial for spots in the under-18 side at the end of the year.
While a lack of resources previously led to delays in linking the region’s best youngsters to the Titans, new owners the Kelly and Frizelle families have committed to greater funding to future-proof.
The increased funding kicks in at the beginning of the club’s financial year on November 1.
Titans elite player development manager Jamie McCormack said the club was thrilled for PBC’s national success.
“A number of the coaching staff are on our coaching staff here with the junior pathways and we have a really strong link with PBC,” he said.
“(Former NRL forward) Brenton Lawrence has been going in there and doing a number of sessions with the firsts on wrestling and ground skills.
“So we have really strong ties with PBC and we’re supporting those boys.”
Foundation Titans football manager and commentator Scott Sattler said it was “concerning” the Gold Coast did not have the majority of the PBC talent tied up.
“One thing the Gold Coast Titans themselves would admit is the last couple of years the club has been in a real holding pattern and when you’re in a holding pattern, what is affected is obviously finances to key departments within your organisation,” Sattler said of the time the club was owned by the NRL.
“I think the Titans would agree they haven’t had the ability to swim with the big boys in the same pool but moving forward, they have now got the ability to … declare they are going to invest a seven-figure sum into junior recruitment.”