Gold Coast Titans

Inaugural season: 2007

Home field: Cbus Super Stadium, Robina, Australia

Owner: Darryl Kelly and Rebecca Frizelle

Team colors: Navy blue, Dodger blue, white, and gold

Overview

The Gold Coast Titans is a professional rugby team in Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL). They are based in the country’s Gold Coast region, a popular tourist destination in the state of Queensland near Brisbane, Australia’s third-largest city. The Gold Coast has a long and storied history as a rugby venue, but prior to 2007, the region had been without a major professional team since the 1998 disbanding of the Gold Coast Chargers.

In 2005, the Queensland government authorized the construction of a 25,000-seat stadium for the Titans in the Gold Coast municipality of Robina. The Titans competed in their inaugural season in 2007, quickly finding success and making consecutive appearances in the NRL’s finals series in 2009 and 2010, when they narrowly missed a trip to the league’s grand final.

The NRL assumed control of the Titans shortly thereafter, with ownership instability temporarily jeopardizing the future of the fledgling club. In 2017, the Kelly and Frizelle families partnered to finance their purchase of the team, restoring its local ownership. The ownership change marked the beginning of a new era for the Titans, who overhauled their coaching and player development staff as they welcomed a new generation of playing talent. As of early 2024, the Gold Coast Titans were coached by Des Hasler and captained by Tino Fa'asuamaleaui.

History

The sport of rugby emerged in the nineteenth century, evolving from soccer to include variant rules permitting hand-to-ball contact and allowing players to carry the ball in advancing it toward the opposing goal. Historians note that early forms of rugby appeared as early as 1750, when teams would partake in informal play with loose rules that did not include fixed limits on the number of players per team. The game takes its name from the Rugby School in Warwickshire, England, which is often cited as the sport’s birthplace. Its rules slowly standardized during the 1830s, with the first official written rules of rugby dating to 1845.

Rugby became a popular spectator sport in England and spread from there to other reaches of the British Empire, which was at its height during the second half of the nineteenth century. British military personnel are often credited with introducing the sport in Australia, with amateur teams playing exhibition games that soon began to attract large crowds. In 1908, Australian players organized to form their own professional league, which became known as the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) and was comprised exclusively of teams based in the city of Sydney. The NSWRL operated in the Sydney area until the early 1980s, when it began to expand to nearby regional urban areas including Wollongong and the Australian capital, Canberra.

During the 1990s, Australian professional rugby underwent a period of profound change as the NSWRL embarked on an expansion campaign seeking to draw in a national audience. This eventually resulted in a split that saw two rival professional leagues vie for supremacy: the Australian Rugby League (ARL), a direct successor to the NSWRL, and the Super League, which had corporate financial backing and challenged the dominance of the ARL. Following the 1997 professional rugby season, the ARL and Super League mutually recognized the inability of Australia’s domestic sports market to accommodate two professional rugby leagues and merged to form the NRL.

Professional rugby was first played in Australia’s Gold Coast region in 1914, but the area’s pro clubs languished in decline for much of the mid-twentieth century. In 1964, a touring team from France played an exhibition match against a group of Gold Coast selects, marking a pivotal moment for Gold Coast club rugby. Though France defeated the Gold Coast team 16–0, the spirited affair sparked renewed public interest in pro rugby. The following year, Gold Coast fielded a club team in the local Tweed League, which grew to join the ranks of noteworthy lower-tier Australian pro rugby circuits during the 1970s. By 1982, a series of league mergers and reconfigurations had reorganized the region’s professional rugby around the State League, which was sanctioned by the Queensland Rugby League. Gold Coast was represented in the league by the Vikings, while the NSWRL issued a club license in 1988 to the Gold Coast-Tweed Giants. In 1990, the Giants became known as the Gold Coast Seagulls before changing their name again in 1996 to become the Gold Coast Chargers. The Chargers remained the region’s pro rugby mainstay until the 1997–1998 overhaul of Australia’s pro rugby landscape.

The Gold Coast did not initially have a team in the newly formed NRL, but earned a license to compete in the league in 2004, pending construction of a new stadium. Construction of Rubina’s Cbus Super Stadium began in 2006, with the Titans temporarily using Australian rules football venue Carrara Stadium as their home venue until 2008. In 2009, the Gold Coast Titans made their first appearance in the NRL’s finals series, a playoff-style competition featuring the top teams from the regular season. The Titans returned to the finals series in 2010, when they came within one win of earning their inaugural trip to the NRL’s grand final, which serves as the league’s championship match. They were bested in the 2010 preliminary final by the Sydney Roosters, who went on to lose the grand final to the St. George-Illawarra Dragons.

Shortly after this early burst of success, the Titans destabilized at the ownership level and the NRL assumed control of the team’s operating license. In 2016, the Titans made a surprise return to the finals series, but were ousted after the first round of competition. The following year, a new ownership group led by local residents Darryl Kelly and Rebecca Frizelle purchased the club. The new owners began a rebuild, hiring Garth Brennan as head coach and Australian rugby legend Mal Meninga as the team’s head of performance and culture. However, the team continued to struggle on the field amid speculation that the club might relocate to Brisbane. In July 2019, Kelly refuted rumors of an impending move out of the Gold Coast region. Brennan was also replaced as coach following the 2019 season, with Justin Holbrook taking over coaching duties. Holbrook was replaced before the 2024 season by experienced coach Des Hasler.

Notable players

As of 2023, the Gold Coast Titans have yet to produce an Australian Rugby Hall of Fame member or a winner of the Dally M Medal as the NRL regular season player of the year. In 2018, the sports media company RealSport revealed its picks for the seventeen best Titans of all time as part of its ongoing series on the top players in the history of each NRL club. The review named Preston Campbell as the top player in franchise history. Campbell, a halfback and fullback, played for the Titans from 2007 to 2011 and was the 2001 Dally M Medal winner as a member of the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks.

RealSport ranked winger-center-fullback David Mead in second place. The Papua New Guinea-born star has earned accolades for his strong two-way game and played for the Titans from 2009 to 2016. At the time of his 2016 departure, Mead was the club’s all-time leading try scorer with 67. A try is scored when a player touches the ball to the ground in the opponent’s goal area

Mat Rogers, who was a member of the Titans from the club’s inaugural season until 2011, placed third in the RealSport review. Primarily playing the center and five-eighth positions, Rogers was a gifted offensive player with exceptional footwork, playmaking, and goal-kicking skills. Backline stalwart William Zillman, who played for the Titans from 2009 to 2017, placed fourth on the list, which noted that Zillman’s career potential was hampered by a string of injuries. Zillman was captain of the Titans in 2016 when they made a surprise run to the NRL finals series. Winger Kevin Gordon, a 2009–2015 Titans alumnus, rounded out the top five players on RealSport’s list. Additional entrants on the list include Ash Taylor (2016– ), Scott Prince (2007–2012), Luke Bailey (2007–2014), Nathan Friend (2007–2011, 2016), Ryan James (2010– ), Nate Myles (2012–2015), Greg Bird (2010–2016), Ashley Harrison (2008–2014), Mark Minichiello (2007–2014), Anthony Laffranchi (2007–2011), Luke Douglas (2012–2016), and Luke O’Dwyer (2007–2013).

Though he was not a member of the Titans during his playing career, Mal Meninga ranks among the best-known Australian rugby figures ever to be associated with the club. Born in Queensland in 1960, Meninga was the Australian national rugby team’s all-time leader in games played at the time of his 1994 retirement. Meninga joined the Titans as head of performance and culture in 2018 and remained active in the role through the 2023 season. He was also named to the Immortals in 2018, a small and exclusive group of Australian rugby legends.

In 2023 the team signed Tino Fa'asuamaleaui to a ten-year contract. The team captain, who was a 2020 premiership winner with the Storm, said he was determined to lead the team to a title. However, at the start of the 2024 season, the Titans had a win percentage of just 38 percent.

Bibliography

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Griffiths, Ellie. “A Brief History of Australia’s National Rugby League.” Culture Trip, 14 Dec. 2016, theculturetrip.com/pacific/australia/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-national-rugby-league-australia/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2020.

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