PREVIEW: 2024 Gold Coast Titans

To overcome the NRL's fine margins while expunging historical ineptitude is a monstrous challenge

Feb 28, 2024

At the end of last season, I wrote about how the Titans might be the first women’s-oriented NRL club if the men’s side continued to blow about in the breeze like fungal spores. That might have yielded some serious nodding, like that gave you something to think about, or an eye roll, possibly because of wokeism gone mad. Both are valid responses.

To then consider the 3 Year Plan to take the Titans from where they are now to holding some silverware by the end of 2026, the end result is extremely hard to envision if only because we’ve never seen a top flight Gold Coast team actually be successful. The women's team is proof that someone, somewhere within the offices at Parkwood can set a goal and, more or less1, execute. It is then incumbent on us to not reduce the Titans organisation to dandelion pappi and instead set the same expectations as any other NRLM club, despite all historical evidence to the contrary.

Most clubs have a mix of a couple of long-term stars they’ve signed well into the late 2020s and a roster that is comprised of contracts expiring this year, or the next or the year after in roughly equal proportions. It’s good business to not have your entire workforce up for renewal at once, mostly for logistical reasons around the supply of free agents and managing the cap. The Titans have two players signed past 2026: Tino Fa’asuamaleaui can stay until 2033 if he so desires and Mo Fotuaika to 2027. Only five contracts expire this year: Klese Haas, Tom Weaver, Kieran Foran, Joe Stimson and Isaac Liu. Everyone else is 50/50 between 2025 and 2026.

This is indicative of the thinking and planning at Parkwood. I don’t think anyone reasonably expects the Titans to be a contender this year, not even the Titans. If things go really well under a new coach with a well established roster that features more holes than highlights, the Tans might make finals and wash out in the first or second week. More realistically, the Titans will bob along in the bottom half of the league in 2024.

That means if you are going to give your desperate fanbase that is hungry for any positive signs out of this franchise, a positive sign, gazes should shift to 2025 and 2026. Gold Coast are all-in on these two years and this is the Titans we’ve got for the next couple of seasons. If it doesn’t work, then the house is getting vacuumed clean of spores and pappi, and they’re starting again.

We’ve got a decent, if perhaps past his prime, coach, currently facing a coronial inquest. We’ve got an all-league starting pack lead by Fa’asuamaleaui and Fotuaika. There’s the extremely special talents of David Fifita, as five-eighth playing in the second row. There’s the precocious potential of Jayden Campbell at fullback to be a Reece Walsh lite. There are outside backs that are good but not exceptional, like former Maroon Phil Sami and Lofi Khan-Pereira, who will hopefully for the Titans never slow down. There’s the skeleton of a competitive program here.

Where the Titans are weak, and where the entire endeavour will come undone, is the spine and the bench. A premiership contender can be built with an average hooker or an average halfback but it can’t be both and the Titans have both. The drop from the Origin-calibre forwards to the rotation is a vast chasm that needs bridging, either with recruits or tactics or, preferably, both.

Even after going all-in, there’s still some wiggle room, both in signings and approach. Will Foran be re-signed and if so, for how much? Would Shaun Johnson be any better? Can they lever Ben Hunt away from the final year of his contract? Will Tom Weaver come good or is there another high schooler on the Gold Coast that can be turned into an elite first grader by 2026? The Titans have done a poor job managing their backyard but the yard is still massive and fecund and there’s lots of people in Pimpama and Nerang and Mudgeeraba and Helensvale that could potentially be of help.

I am loathe to bash all Gold Coast content into a Brisbane shape but if you accept the premise that the Broncos are changing the way the game is played2, with a greater focus on speed and acceleration than the more traditional grind or the Panthers’ particularly powerful implementation, then the Titans are well placed with their roster to get on that train. Whether Hasler or the front office would even acknowledge that a train is departing remains to be seen, let alone whether Gold Coast can jump on board.

The 3 Year Plan has been thought through at Titans HQ - they painted it on the wall - but there’s still so much that can go wrong and still so much to get right. Even sticking to the plan after what may well be a poor 2024 and not immediately wrecking the cap will strain patience. The margins are always fine but to get on top of that while expunging historical ineptitude is a monstrous challenge. If the Titans are going to join the rest of the Q4 as a club that actually means something, it starts here and now by rising to that challenge and overcoming it.

Guess: 11-13, 11th

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Stats Drop

A refresher on the metrics. The projections are built from a weighted average of the last three years of player TPRs. It tends to extrapolate what has happened to the future, which catches most of the league, but it misses the occasional explosions. Last season, backs had an unusually productive year compared to forwards and while the numbers are adjusting to this potentially new reality, the system is in transition. As usual, 1-17 is as per League Unlimited with some tweaks to account for news since publication.

Regression: The Titans had the fifth worst points difference in 2023, albeit better than one of the finalists. Their Pythagorean expectation was equivalent to 9.5 wins, compared to nine actual wins. We should expect a similar level of actual wins to how the Titans’ for and against works out in 2024. The Titans will need to win at least eight games to hit the overs on the disappointment line.
Projections: The Titans project as 12th best in the NRL by per game Taylors. They are one of six D-grade teams with the Dolphins, i.e. projected to produce less than 85% of the Panthers’ projected per game production. There are three projected A-grade teams, seven B-grade (Broncos) and one C-grade (Cowboys).
Experience: The Titans’ 1-17 has 52% of the career WARG of the top rated team by this metric (Rabbitohs, 74.2). Only Kieran Foran and David Fifita have more than 5 career WARG. Fotuaika, Liu, Brimson and Sami are all above 4 career WARG.
Talent: The Titans have a below NRL-average distribution of talent, per pre-season TPR projections, with a surfeit of players classified as replacement. Six players are projected to produce more than half the team’s Taylors: Campbell, Brimson, Sami, Fifita, Fotuaika and Khan-Pereira.
Coach: Des Hasler was not in the league in 2023 and begins with the Titans in 2024. Since 2016, he has accumulated a coach factor of -6, which is ahead of only eight other NRL coaches in that period (including Holbrook). Hasler’s stint at Manly from 2004 to 2011 is the single best coaching tenure in the NRL as measured by net change in class Elo rating points.

Probably about one rolled ankle short.

You don’t have to, you can disagree.