Titans NRLW: How a coffee catch-up helped set in motion plans for Gold Coast women’s team

How a coffee catch-up between Karina Brown and Rebecca Frizelle in 2014 sowed the seeds for a Titans NRLW team seven years later.

IT WAS a casual conversation over coffee between two Gold Coast rugby league figureheads that first planted the seed for a Titans NRL Women’s Premiership team.

On Sunday, that conversation comes full circle.

The Gold Coast Titans will make their NRL Women’s Premiership debut away to St George Illawarra a touch over seven years after Karina Brown and Rebecca Frizelle sat down to talk tactics.

“It was 2014 and the NRL at the time was hosting a mentor program with high profile women in the NRL world, and Rebecca Frizelle who at the time was a sponsor of the Titans and on the board became (my mentor),” Titans outside back Brown recalled of her first meeting with the now-club co-owner.

“I remember saying to her how good it would be to one day have a women’s Titans team – that would be the ultimate dream.”

Gold Coast Titans inaugural player Karina Brown. Photo: Scott Davis

Brown conceded that at the time it was nothing more than “a little pipe dream” – the NRLW would not be established until four years later.

But the Australian and Queensland representative had by then already built her own team from the ground up, the Burleigh Bears, and Brown recalled sharing her dreams with the then-Titans board member.

“I was telling her all about my dreams of winning a grand final with the Burleigh Bears at that point,” Brown said.

Like many in her position, Brown did not have the same opportunities to play rugby league growing up.

Her first game was at Runaway Bay in 2010. After a year abroad, Brown returned to the Coast in 2012 to discover the Seagulls were not fielding a team that season.

“Damien Driscoll was the CEO at Bay and he moved to Burleigh. I called him and said ‘hey, I would love to field a team in 2012’,” Brown recalled.

“I was 23 years old. I had to go get a sponsor, 30 players, a coach, a manager … I had to do it all. Looking back it’s quite funny to think what’s actually achievable.

“It was a monumental amount of work but I was just so driven to have this team on the Gold Coast that somehow I managed to pull it together – not by myself, of course.”

Burleigh has since won six of the past seven seasons, including the 2021 BHP Premiership title.

A team built predominantly of local talent, Burleigh has flown the flag for women’s football on the Gold Coast for the past decade and while that will continue, the Bears have a new ally at the top of the tree – and Brown could not be more excited.

“Being a Gold Coast girl – I went to Marymount College – it’s cool to have been a driving force at the Bears and to now make history as part of the first-ever women’s Titans team,” she said.

“This is the final piece to the Titans puzzle in really having an organisation that has quality and diversity.

“Having a women’s team there also gives the local junior girls something to aspire to now. They have a complete pathway.”

Brown was this week nominated for the 2021 Veronica White Medal, which recognises contributions by female rugby league players in their local communities and beyond.

A selfless advocate for women and girls in rugby league, spare Brown a personal moment of satisfaction on Sunday as a dream to represent her home town on the big stage is finally realised.

Originally published as Titans NRLW: How a coffee catch-up helped set in motion plans for Gold Coast women’s team