Tide turning for our tribe
The community is beginning to rally around the Gold Coast club which has a new female team, plans for a national netball side and premiership glory
GOOD business requires good people and knowing a community means being part of the community. As one of the Gold Coast’s most prominent businesswomen, Rebecca Frizelle knows these core tenets better than just about anybody.
They are the key strands that have sat at the forefront of almost every business and sporting decision she has been party to since she stepped down from the Gold Coast Titans’ board of directors to take a 50 per cent ownership stake in the club at the end of 2017.
It came at the pointy end of a period of incredible volatility at the club, which included entering voluntary administration, off-field player scandals and poor on-field performance.
New ownership did not immediately solve the Titans’ entrenched problems but so began the slow, concerted approach to restoring the club’s image.
“It was important to ensure the licence remained on the Gold Coast,” Ms Frizelle recalled.
“It wasn’t a certain thing – there was a lot of opposition for it to be moved back then.
“But between ourselves, the Kelly family, our then-ceo Graeme Annesley and the board, we knew our city deserved to have a team here … our rugby league history goes back over 100 years.”
Fast-forward to 2022, and the Titans have emerged out the other side stronger than ever.
Restoring the club’s image included a literal rebranding of the much-loved golden knight, alongside a bold 10-year road map that promised premierships and declared values of selflessness, trust and accountability.
The rugby league world raised a collective eyebrow at the Titans’ bold bid for four premierships by 2030 – shared between the NRL and NRLW teams – but in-house, it was an important benchmark to set.
“I think it holds you accountable,” Frizelle said.
“We also didn’t just fill it with words, we believe it. We’ve worked back how and why we will get there and there’s no one in the club that believes we won’t get there.”
The nuanced change in mentality from a ‘want’ to a ‘will’ empowers just about everything the 2022 version of the Titans are doing.
The club ‘wanted’ to be part of the inaugural NRLW competition in 2018, though she concedes it was not ready to go all-in at that point.
“We did pitch to go into the first draw of women’s teams and we weren’t successful,” she said.
“In hindsight I think that was the right thing … the timing is better for us now, because we’re a lot more established. We’re able to really commit and really invest where we need to so that it succeeds.
“I think we would have had a lot on our plate if we’d done it when it first launched.”
Now, as the club prepares for its maiden NRL Women’s clash against St George Illawarra on Sunday, Ms Frizelle recalls a conversation with another high-profile female Gold Coast rugby league figurehead that set the wheels in motion, almost eight years ago.
COFFEE WITH KARINA
“It would have been 2014 I think when I met Karina, and I couldn’t help but walk away energised by her passion and her drive for the game,” Ms Frizelle said of her first meeting with Australian Jillaroos and Queensland State of Origin star, Karina Brown.
At the time a Titans sponsor and board member, Ms Frizelle met with Ms Brown for coffee and the conversation quickly turned to a future in which the club fielded a women’s team.
Brown had just built the Burleigh Bears women’s team from the ground up and shared with Frizelle her desire to take the club to grand finals and premierships.
“It did seem like a farfetched idea in the moment,” Ms Brown said of her pitch.
“The NRLW didn’t even exist then – it was a little pipe dream I suppose.
“But I told her how good it would be to one day have a women’s Titans team – that it would be the ultimate dream and a proper pathway, now that the Burleigh Bears was created.
“I was telling her all about my dreams of winning a grand final with the Burleigh Bears at that point.”
Burleigh is now a women’s rugby league powerhouse, with Ms Brown at the helm of multiple premierships – most recently last year’s BHP Premiership title.
And the 32year-old outside back was one of the first to field a call from the Titans when its NRLW expansion bid was accepted last year.
“Meeting Karina and getting to know her and how she juggled her job, commitments and finances just to play this game, I couldn’t help but walk away inspired,” Ms Frizelle said.
“I had spent time in the women’s State of Origin camp and the quality of women that were competing and the sacrifices they were making really opened my eyes.
“Before that I didn’t understand how hard they were training and competing to deliver this game, without payment, without the appropriate levels of support that their male counterparts had. That was an eye opener for me.
“These women were using all their annual leave to compete in these comps – to me it showed their passion and commitment to the game and those coming after them.
“I felt it was a responsibility on all of us to support them in any way we could.”
With its Ts crossed and Is dotted, the Titans’ NRLW entry was secured and soon after the Gold Coast’s top products started returning home.
“They wanted to play for their city; they wanted to play for the Titans,” Ms Frizelle said.
“This was their club and they didn’t have that opportunity (previously). The culture is the number one thing for us and the belief in success and the commitment to success.”
We can definitely feel the attitude towards the club changing, because people can see we’re doing what we said we were going to do and we’re committing to it.
COMMUNITY COMES FIRST
National sporting success has been hard to
come by for Gold Coast sporting franchises.
The Titans boast one finals win in the club’s 15-year history, while across town the Gold Coast Suns are yet to feature at all in the AFL post-season.
Gold Coast United lasted just three A-league campaigns before dropping out of Australian football’s top flight entirely.
Gold Coast’s sporting ‘curse’ grows legs with each passing year that success eludes its professional teams. But after a promising end to the 2021 season which culminated in a return to finals, the Titans appear poised to test the curse in what look like promising coming years.
“We can definitely feel the attitude towards the club changing, because people can see we’re doing what we said we were going to do and we’re committing to it,” Ms Frizelle said.
“The Coast – the community – was probably right to be wary whether the club would stick around or not. Now they know we’re not going anywhere, they know we will continue to invest and develop the club.
“The Titans are part of this city’s growth. “We see ourselves as a club for the whole city – boys and girls – and create those grassroots pathways that are important,” Ms Frizelle added.
“The CEO made the decision a few years ago, when we took ownership, the first decision was to invest in junior rugby league.
“We were seeing all our juniors leave the Coast. We put away a substantial amount of money to invest and create that pathway and what we saw was this enormous appetite of young people that couldn’t wait to become a part of it.
“That opened our eyes to the depth and breadth of young people on the Coast wanting to play sport … we had to take any opportunity we could (to help make that happen).”
Proving the modern Titans are about action more than words, the club made further strides to link with the Gold Coast community in 2021 by acquiring a state league Sapphire Series netball licence.
In the space of 12 months the club has grown its stable from one sporting team to three.
“We had been contacted by various people saying they felt all the opportunities weren’t being realised,” Ms Frizelle said of the netball entry.
“We were asked if we would consider taking it on. We did our due diligence and put in a pitch to take it on for the Coast.
“To us, it was a no-brainer. Why would you not embrace all these young women out there – and boys – who are playing sport, for what it delivers to a community?
“The Titans since their inception have shown they’re entrenched in the community, committed to the community, and it’s incredibly important to us.
“Netball gives 11,500 girls an opportunity to go from grassroots through to the elite level.”
As discussions progressed, Ms Frizelle and the club discovered netball was already a major part of the Titans.
“What amazed us with netball, before we even (made the move) was internally we asked our players and senior staff – we did a straw test,” she added.
“Everybody had a connection. To me, from then it made absolute sense.”
Grand plans for a Super Netball entry are already on the table at Titans HQ and with a groundswell of community support behind it, the club could well be fielding three professional teams in the coming years.
“Ideally that’s where we’d love to see ourselves, because that then is seeing it through from grassroots to the national level,” Ms Frizelle said.
“With 11,500 players on the Gold Coast, you can’t help but think there’s enough depth there to have a truly successful national team when the time is right.”
For a proud Gold Coaster like Ms Frizelle, keeping the Titans on the Glitter Strip was paramount. Now secure in that objective, the club’s community engagement from top to bottom, grassroots to the tree tops, serves as its next big goal.
“If you’d asked me even five years ago would I ever own a rugby league team or be partowner, I would have never seen this coming,” she said. “But when the opportunity arose and we could see what might happen (the club leaving the Coast) we didn’t hesitate … to ensure it stayed here.
“I’m no athlete myself. But my kids have all played sport.
“To me it’s more about what sport delivers for a community, the outcome and pathways it creates, the hope it brings and the way it unifies like nothing else can.
“We want to build a common interest – belonging to one tribe. That’s my tribe. The Titans are my tribe.
“No matter who we are we all want to belong to something. As humans, we do. This allows a whole family to be together and be passionate about their tribe, no matter whether they’re playing NRLW, NRL or netball.”