PETER GLEESON: JUST GIVE DON THE STATUE
Stalwart deserves a bronze statue as he departs the Titans at a pivotal time when the player stocks and culture are starting to build genuine excitement
THEY call him The Don and we need a bronze statue of him erected outside the Robina stadium.
Anthony Don hung up the boots this week, bringing down the curtain on a wonderful career with the Gold Coast Titans.
His is a remarkable story, having not been drafted into the Titans squad until he was 25. In footballing terms, he’d endured a long apprenticeship playing for the Grafton Ghosts, chalking up try scoring records along the way.
As he announced his retirement, Don was emotional, an indication that he was not just invested in the club on the field, but off the field as well.
Don was in many respects the glue that kept the club together, particularly in the dark days not that long ago.
He is the club’s highest try scorer and leaves with a strong legacy of play-making ability and a commitment to off-field excellence.
His trademark try was to soar over the head of opposition players, pluck the ball out of the air, and score.
What the retirement of Don demonstrates is that the Titans are building a club centred on loyalty and getting the basics right.
Under coach Justin Holbrook, the Titans are now a real chance for the semifinals. They have recruited well in recent years.
The addition of David Fifita has been game-changing. He provides real starch to a forward pack that paves the way for players like AJ Brimson and Ash Taylor to weave their magic.
In American football, the pathway to success is complex and challenging. Recruitment is key, but so too is culture.
The best NFL coaches teach their players about grit and resilience. When the chips are down, when the big play is needed, the best coaches and players get it right.
The Titans are a football club that is being built from the ground up.
It suffered for some years with poor management and the dire results on the paddock only added to the tale of misery.
The Titans had become easybeats. When chairman Denis Watt, senior director Rebecca Frizelle and executive board member Darryl Kelly began the painstaking task of turning the club around, many would have given them long odds of success.
For too long, players had looked upon a stint at the Titans as a holiday. Birds, booze and surf was an irresistible cocktail.
You knew that if the playing group finished up on a boat in the Broadwater, it was bound to make headlines.
Nowadays there is a quiet confidence around the club. There are no outlandish ambitions when it comes to the competition ladder.
The semi-finals will be a great result, but for the first time in many seasons, fans are watching a footy team that knows how to win.
Are they capable of beating Melbourne or the Panthers? Probably not.
But there is little doubt the current playing group is the best we’ve seen for many years. It’s arguably near the top.
But that means nothing unless they build on the 2021 season. This playing group has
the ability and courage to contend come September.
The other big part of culture – maybe the biggest – is belief. At the top level of elite sport, the only difference on the day is belief.
The secret to the phenomenon known as Tiger Woods is that he had unshakeable belief in what he could produce.
If he needed birdie to win the British Open, he did it. That’s where the 2021 alumni at the Titans have to make the next step.
They’ve proven they can compete with the best teams. Now, it’s a matter of believing you can beat them. That type of culture doesn’t happen overnight. But there’s a sense
at the Titans that it is coming.
At a time when the Gold Coast is on its knees because of the collapse in tourism, having a good footy team to get behind is not a bad distraction.
Gold Coasters also need to embrace this new era. Getting along to games is a sure-fire sign that the city is liking the way the Titans are transforming.
If you do go to CBUS Stadium, make sure you let Titans bosses know we want a statue of Anthony Don outside the stadium.
He deserves it.
Nowadays there is a quiet confidence at the club
YEAR after year migrating whales head north and each year there is at least one of these beautiful creatures that will get caught in these antiquated nets when there are better means of letting them pass up and down our waters. It has happened this migration with the “first” one entangled.
And each year the same procrastination is undertaken while these beautiful creations go through the same, age-old head scratching to save them.
And this year the same head scratching will take place readying for their migration in 2022.
D.J. FRASER, CURRUMBIN
I REFER to the recent UN Climate Change Report to the government. It’s disturbing that the loudest antagonists, Joyce and Canavan, are from the National Party, yet their very constituents are the ones who will suffer the most.
Like the peanut farmers from
Kinaroy who can no longer farm there because of failing rains.
Joyce and Canavan are just stooges of big coal and big gas and no longer represent the core of the party.
The scary thing is it also puts at risk our food production, in lieu of coal mines, and the people of Torres Strait Islands that could be inundated.
JEFFREY DAVIDSON, SOUTHPORT
JUST watched a spiel by NSW minister Tanya Davies on Sky News.
She is standing against mandatory jabs as an assault against our personal human rights.
I wonder what would have happened in times past when compulsory service to the defence forces (conscription) was in place.
The country once rallied together to defend our lifestyles and freedom.
If we had questioned and procrastinated back then we would be speaking fluent Japanese today.
Which begs the question, are we scared of a needle or are we just no longer concerned with losing our freedom?
KIM WILSON, GOLD COAST
IT’S easy to offer advice as a “back seat driver”, Anthony Albanese.
The federal Opposition leader’s financial incentive to a slow national vaccination uptake, is simply “money for jab”.
It imitates the modus operandi of the USA, displaying a capitalist approach to winning votes.
We cannot overstate the need for the urgency of jabs for our health and economic sake.
This is simply a move by Labor to win votes in the upcoming federal election.
Labor can’t come up with a failproof plan for returning the country to pre-Covid level, so offering money the nation doesn’t have – which he has no authority to promise – won’t solve the hesitation.
Anti-vaxxers and those with anxiety about the brand, still need to be convinced about the great urgency.
There is no guarantee, even with a full two vaccinations, that this will suffice. So requiring two or even a third booster shot has yet to prove 100 per cent protection. Would Labor then pay $900?
It is obvious that Labor, like our present political culture, has no remedy for continual Covid breakouts and are lost for words, bar one: “lockdown”.
ELOISE ROWE, TANNUM SANDS