‘Up there with Penrith’: the young guns to watch as Future Titans shine
“We are up rith.”
That was the declaration of Titans’ elite player development manager Jamie Mccormack as his squad of under-16s prepare to face Auckland at Cbus Super Stadium on Saturday. Along with the girls’ under-17s squad, the Future Titans talents will play curtain-raisers before the NRL unit battle the Brisbane Broncos, as the club seeks to become a junior juggernaut.
The Penrith Panthers have played in three straight grand there with Penfinals – winning two – courtesy of a nursery of local athletes. And Mccormack said that was the make-up of the Gold Coast’s vision.
“We want to make sure we give our local juniors and Northern Rivers players every opportunity to become a Titan, and one day down the track hopefully our full NRL squad are all just local products,” he said.
“We’re 50 per cent out of our top 30 now all local products, so we’re up there with Penrith at the moment for our junior development. “It’s really important for us to secure
our young talent here on the Gold Coast or into the Northern Rivers and give them every opportunity.
“If they do a job with us then hopefully they enjoy what we’re doing, we can upskill them and they won’t want to go anywhere else in the future.
“I’d like to think the boys respect the opportunity to wear the Titans’ colours and that’s what we’re trying to put inside them – every time they get the chance to wear the Titans colours it is like a grand final.”
While the boys will kick off from 5.35pm, the under-17 girls, coached by Veronica White, will take the field at 4.15pm. “We look forward to seeing how the Academy team compete against an unknown opposition with the Auckland Development team,” White said. “We hear they have a strong forward pack and believe that we can handle them with our ability to shift the ball.”