NRL 2022: Shane Flanagan could be thrown coaching lifeline by Gold Coast Titans
Premiership mastermind Shane Flanagan has been identified as a figure that could help lift the Gold Coast out of the NRL’s cellar.
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The Titans have considered resurrecting Cronulla premiership mastermind Shane Flanagan’s NRL coaching career in a bid to salvage Justin Holbrook’s tenure at the Gold Coast.
The Courier-Mail can reveal the Titans have held high-level internal discussions about bringing Flanagan to the Gold Coast as Holbrook’s right-hand man.
Flanagan, 56, coached Cronulla to its memorable maiden NRL premiership in 2016 and spent a total of eight seasons at the Sharks, transforming the club into a title contender.
With the Titans outright last on the ladder, and Holbrook’s senior assistant Jim Dymock already departing the club, Flanagan has been identified as a figure that could help lift the Gold Coast out of the NRL’s cellar.
The Titans have so far resisted sacking Holbrook and could look to inject genuine NRL premiership nous into the club from next season in the form of Flanagan, who currently works in the Dragons’ recruitment department.
The Titans declined to comment when asked about their interest in Flanagan.
Flanagan said he had not held recent dialogue with the Titans, but spoke to the club last year about a consultancy role and would consider a move to the Gold Coast.
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“You don’t rule anything out,” Flanagan said.
“I would consider it, but under my contract with the Dragons, I could only leave if I was offered a head-coaching job.
“I have a lot going on with my life in Sydney, so for me to pack up and move to the Gold Coast would be a big call, but as it stands it hasn’t been put to me.
“I have a lot of stuff on with Fox and the radio and my commitments to the Dragons. I don’t think the Titans would have the money to match it anyway, it would be a big move.
“I haven’t heard anything lately to be honest. I actually know Justin. I was thinking about being a contractor to the Titans, I spoke to them last year about helping them for this season but I haven’t heard anything since then.”
Despite having a proven track record as an NRL coach with a solid 55 per cent winning record (102 wins from 185 games) at Cronulla, Flanagan is a polarising figure within the game.
After taking the reins at Cronulla in 2010, he was banned from coaching the Sharks in 2014 following the club’s infamous peptides scandal.
Flanagan returned to Cronulla in 2015 and led the Sharks to their first NRL premiership a year later in a gripping grand final win against the Melbourne Storm.
But he was once again embroiled in controversy after being found to have violated the terms of his suspension, prompting the NRL to deregister him as a coach in 2018.
Flanagan resurfaced as an assistant to Dragons coach Paul McGregor for the 2020 season but hasn’t coached in the NRL since.
He has been linked to numerous head coaching positions, but re-entering the NRL via an assistant’s role at the Titans could be a possibility.
His no-nonsense approach and clout in the game could be exactly what the Titans need following a disastrous 2022 campaign.
In his third season at the Titans, Holbrook’s record has slumped to 35 per cent with 22 wins from 63 games as he fights to avoid the wooden spoon.
The Titans have only won three games this season in unconvincing fashion, beating the Tigers on the final siren, Warriors by two points and Dragons in golden point.
With a contract until the end of 2024, the Titans are reluctant to punt Holbrook and are giving him every opportunity to make his career a success at the Gold Coast.
Drafting in a coach with Flanagan’s pedigree to assist him could help Holbrook hang on to his job at the Titans.
Holbrook safe at Titans, for now
By Brent Read
Titans owner Rebecca Frizelle has given coach Justin Holbrook her resounding support and insisted that any blame for the club’s sub-par season must be spread across the entire organisation.
Frizelle, speaking at a Women in League breakfast this week, also issued a rallying cry for the misfiring Titans as she boldly declared: “We will succeed.”
Holbrook has been in the crosshairs for much of the season, the Titans having gone from finalists to bottom feeders in a matter of months. There were reports recently that his position was on shaky ground but Frizelle insisted the club would go into next season with Holbrook at the helm.
“We will be heading in with the same coach,” Frizelle said.
“We’re a club that is accountable for the decisions it makes and the head coach doesn’t make all the decisions. So it doesn’t seem reasonable that he pays with his career.
“If our performance doesn’t improve than of course we are going to have a further think about that. But, at the moment, we have all made decisions about a strategy and plan, and we all have to own those decisions.
“That is what we are doing. It is all out decisions. We own it, all of us. It doesn’t seem right to do that [sack the coach]. We believe he can coach, we believe he can coach.”
Of the many decisions that have been made, one will come back to haunt the Titans this weekend when they host Canberra at Cbus Super Stadium.
Gold Coast made the decision to allow halfback Jamal Fogarty leave at the end of last season to join the Raiders and he has been at the heart of Canberra’s late-season bid to play in the finals.
Meanwhile, the Titans have struggled with an inexperienced spine in Fogarty’s absence.
“It is not one single thing — we have had a few things that haven’t panned out, a couple of decisions that we possibly should have put some greater thought into,” Frizelle said.
“But it is onwards and upwards and we will continue to make changes to get it right. We will succeed. We are very disappointed in our own performance this year — we expected to do a lot better than we did.
“We learnt from that and we are going to head into 2023 a much stronger and better outfit than we were this year.”
The club has already made changes to Holbrook’s support staff and Frizelle is confident that the tide will change.
“We will be making changes or have already made changes, which are pretty clear, in the football department about bringing in greater support and resources to ensure his [Holbrook’s] success,” Frizelle said.
“We own that, we have underperformed this year. What is really interesting is that commercially we are really strong, our member base has grown, our fan base has grown, if you look at our metrics across social media and website traffic, we are up there among some of the best clubs.
“Of course, the finances are important but it is just to deliver. We are going to drag it there kicking and screaming if we have to.
“It is an amazing organisation with incredible people in it genuinely making a change in that community. We will continue to do that.
“We will be a successful club. We had a bad season, we are fixing that and we will head into ’23 with a much stronger outfit than we have now.”
Holbrook admits Titanic blunder
-Peter Badel, Travis Meyn
Titans coach Justin Holbrook has admitted he got it wrong releasing Jamal Fogarty to
Canberra as the Raiders halfback returns to the Gold Coast for the first time.
Fogarty will be out to sink the Titans club that gave him two cracks at the NRL when Ricky Stuart’s Raiders run out at Cbus Super Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
After playing two games for the Titans in 2017, Fogarty entered the NRL wilderness for three years as he failed to get a run at Parramatta before leading Burleigh to a Queensland Cup premiership in 2019.
When Covid halted the 2020 NRL season after two rounds, Fogarty was given the Gold Coast’s No. 7 jersey and played the remaining 18 games of the year as the Titans finished ninth.
He was then appointed co-captain of the Titans in 2021 and started 21 games at halfback as the Gold Coast clinched a drought-breaking NRL finals appearance, losing a thriller in week one to the Roosters.
At 27 and with 41 games for the Titans next to his name, Fogarty had established himself as the Gold Coast’s chief playmaker and had committed to the club until the end of 2023.
But in the post-season wash-up, Holbrook delivered a dagger when he told Fogarty that rookie halfback Toby Sexton would be given first crack at the Titans’ No. 7 jersey in 2022.
With Canberra in need of a halfback, Fogarty sought a release to head to the nation’s capital, where he has returned from a knee injury to pilot the Raiders’ resurgence as the finals loom.
Meanwhile, Sexton has struggled without a senior playmaker during the Gold Coast’s dramatic crash into wooden spoon contention, prompting Holbrook to concede axing Fogarty was the wrong call as he defended the signing of Manly veteran Kieran Foran.
“We made a decision as a club, I can’t change that now,” Holbrook said. “If I’d have known where we were sitting now, it’s easy. It’s easy to comment on things after they’ve happened.
“You need a crystal ball. It hasn’t worked out the way we would have liked, that’s obvious. I’ll cop that on the chin.
“Hence why we’ve bought Kieran Foran. A lot of people say that’s like for like but Jamal had played two games before we played him. Kieran Foran’s played 280 so I don’t know how that’s like for like.
“I’m happy Jamal’s continued his career and is going well. I can’t change what we’ve done.”
After extending Fogarty’s contract last year before releasing him, Holbrook maintains he wanted the Beaudesert product to remain at the club.
“I standby the decision that I wanted him to stay – I’ve said that all along,” he said.
“I wanted him to stay and fight for his spot but he had a guaranteed opportunity elsewhere.
“I’ve said five times that’s why we brought Will Smith to the club. We didn’t want to leave ourselves short in that area, that’s why we bought an experienced half and unfortunately it didn’t work out (Smith was released on compassionate grounds).
“If I knew Will wasn’t coming to the club then you definitely keep an experienced half.
“Jamal is having a good year now he’s back from injury and playing well. It was a personal decision he had to make. It would have been hard to stand in his way.
“We gave him his opportunity late in his career and then he was seeking to get the most of his career. He is doing a good job of that.”
Reluctant to cause a stir ahead of his Titanic showdown, Fogarty rejected interview requests this week to focus on leading Canberra to a third straight win.
Trading his home town for chilly Canberra could have been a shock to the system, but Fogarty has flourished under Stuart at a Raiders club rich in history after being told he could leave the Titans.
“In typical Jamal style, he was good about it,” said Fogarty’s manager, Tas Bartlett.
“At the end of the day he knew it was business. He wants to be a professional rugby league player and you have to make difficult decisions sometimes.
“He understands there’s always people coming through and he knew at some stage Toby was probably going to pass him.
“He is a mature bloke and took it pretty well. He knew he had a rugby league journey ahead of him and has moved on to better pastures for himself at this stage.
“It’s always hard leaving the Gold Coast, but he has settled in really well. He got an injury early which knocked him around because he had been signed to do a role but he’s been back a few weeks now and had his best game in first grade for a while last weekend.
“He is calm, loves the place and is playing the best footy he’s ever played in first grade. That has a lot to do with the off-field impact of the Raiders.”
‘He’s a decent guy’: Titans explain Proctor sacking
Titans coach Justin Holbrook has blasted a “dumb” Kevin Proctor but insists “Vape-Gate” isn’t another sign of a rotten culture on the Gold Coast.
Proctor’s 283-game NRL career is over after the former Titans captain was punted on Monday following a bizarre social media post.
Proctor filmed himself vaping in a toilet cubicle at CommBank Stadium in Sydney during halftime of the Titans’ 36-26 loss to Canterbury on Sunday and briefly posted it to his Instagram account.
The former New Zealand international was fined $15,000 by the Titans for breaking NRL and stadium rules and put on gardening leave for the remainder of his contract, which expires in October.
The Proctor incident came as the Titans find themselves in crisis, sitting in 15th spot on the ladder and luckily avoiding falling to last after the Wests Tigers were robbed by the Bunker.
Holbrook struggled to explain Proctor’s actions as he fights for his future heading into Saturday’s showdown with the resurgent Raiders at Cbus Super Stadium.
“It was really dumb,” he said.
“Poor ‘KP’ is not the world’s worst person, he is a decent guy, but he’s done a really dumb thing and gave us no choice.
“It’s a terrible look with where we sit on the table. People at every club are going to make poor decisions but it’s highlighted when you’re not having a good year.
“It’s not the whole side doing it, it’s one action. You’d love to control everybody all the time but you can’t.
“It was a poor action and he’s paying the price for it. That’s all we can do.
“As a club, the nucleus of this side is really committed to what we’re doing.”
The Titans hired Immortal Mal Meninga in late 2018 to overhaul a club culture that was bringing sustained failure to the Gold Coast.
After collecting the wooden spoon in 2019 under former coach Garth Brennan, the Titans showed improvement in 2020 (ninth) and last year (eighth) with Holbrook at the helm.
But they have crashed dramatically this season, winning only three games and losing their past eight to plummet into spoon contention with six weeks to go.
With off-field incidents now compounding terrible on-field performances, Titans players have been put on notice but Holbrook insisted the Gold Coast’s demise wasn’t the result of a poor dressing room culture.
“It doesn’t say anything about the culture,” he said.
“KP has had some challenges through his career and life and he’s going to continue to face that. He is not a bad person, but he makes bad choices and gets himself into situations that aren’t good and we’ve tried to help him through.
“Unfortunately he’s made another poor decision. As a club we’ve tried to keep him on track but he’s got to take responsibility for it.
“We’re disappointed with how we’re going but we’ve got the right people here and we’re making a few changes with staff and players.
“Right now it’s tough with KP’s actions and our performances. I’m not painting a better picture but it’s not as bad as what you think.
“Everyone knows what’s expected of them. With where we sit, you’re going to get more scrutinised. I remind them of that all the time.
“If we are seen laughing, with where we sit we look disrespectful. But if Penrith do it, it’s funny because they’re winning.
“That’s fact and we’ve got to accept that and be more careful with how we conduct ourselves.”
‘Embarrassed’ Proctor breaks silence over vaping scandal
Sacked Titans forward Kevin Proctor has spoken of his embarrassment at the vaping drama that has led to his demise at the Gold Coast — and ended his NRL career.
As revealed by News Corp, Proctor was axed by the Titans and fined $15,000 following revelations the former skipper broke Australian stadium laws by using an e-cigarette during Gold Coast’s 36-26 loss to Canterbury at CommBank Stadium.
Proctor, who was fined $20,000 by the Titans and banned for four games in 2017 over a cocaine scandal, used his own social-media account to post vision of himself vaping in what appears to be a toilet cubicle.
The footage includes a caption saying: “Not the half time vape”. During the seven-second video Proctor, wearing a Titans polo, sucks on the e-cigarette and shakes his head as he blows smoke into the camera.
The video was posted at 3.17pm, while the Titans-Bulldogs clash was still taking place.
On a day of drama at Parkwood on Monday, furious Titans officials held crisis talks with Proctor’s management. Off-contract at season’s end, Proctor was informed of his sanctions and ordered not to turn up to Titans training for the rest of the year, effectively delivering the bullet to his 283-game career in the NRL.
Proctor rode the ultimate rollercoaster during his 14-year tenure with his premiership win at Melbourne in 2012 and 22 Tests for New Zealand marred by a cocaine saga, a biting incident two years ago and now the e-cigarette farce that has seen his Titans contract go up in smoke.
Breaking his silence on the CommBank controversy, Proctor detailed his remorse over the incident, admitting he was battling some off-field issues.
“I am embarrassed with regards to my actions,” Proctor said.
“I would like to thank the Titans for their understanding and acknowledging my personal situation.
“I wish Justin (Holbrook, Titans coach) and my teammates all the very best for the rest of the year.
“I would like to thank owners Daryl Kelly and Rebecca Frizelle for their support over the years and all the Titans fans.”
The Proctor affair is the latest drama to engulf the Titans, who are equal last and fighting to avoid their second wooden spoon in four seasons.
The Titans released a statement confirming they have severed ties with Proctor, who joined the Titans in 2017 after eight successful seasons at the Storm.
“The Gold Coast Titans have sanctioned Kevin Proctor after being made aware of an incident during yesterday’s round 19 fixture against the Bulldogs,” the club said.
“Proctor has also been released from his commitments with the club for the remainder of the year and will not return to train or play with the squad.
“His actions were in breach of both NRL and Stadium regulations.”
Fox Sports cameras captured Proctor in attendance at CommBank Stadium, with the former Test back-rower sitting near the Titans interchange bench as a spectator after being overlooked for the Gold Coast’s top 17 squad.
Smoking is banned at all major Australian stadia and the Titans have taken a hardline stance against Proctor for vaping inside CommBank Stadium.
Following talks on Monday, the parties agreed to part ways immediately, allowing the Titans to move forward with roster management and Proctor to pursue opportunities overseas in the Super League competition.
Proctor’s manager Chris Orr of PSM said the 33-year-old has battled some off-field challenges relating to a marriage breakdown and his mother being diagnosed with cancer.
“Kevin is dealing with some difficult issues surrounding the breakdown of his marriage and ongoing injuries,” Orr said.
“He will take this time to recover and refocus on possible opportunities overseas.”
Proctor is no stranger to on and off-field controversy. Two years ago, he was sent off for biting former Sharks halfback Shaun Johnson and, despite protesting his innocence, was subsequently banned for four matches by the NRL judiciary.
The former New Zealand back-rower first landed in hot water in 2017, when he was stripped of the Titans captaincy after being caught on camera snorting cocaine outside a Canberra nightclub following a Test match against Australia.
Proctor is expected to join the Super League next season with his management in negotiations with a number of English clubs including Salford, Wakefield and Hull FC.
Proctor is currently fit but has been unable to force his way into the Titans starting side behind back-rowers David Fifita and Beau Fermor.
The 15th-placed Titans have had a wretched season, having won just three of 18 games, and vision of one of their senior leaders vaping during a game will put their club culture under the microscope.
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