The ongoing review at Gold Coast could cost coach Garth Brennan his job
The ongoing review at the Titans has triggered an identity crisis that could cost battling coach Garth Brennan his job as more turmoil engulfs the Gold Coast club.
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The Gold Coast Titans are in a crisis of confusion — and it could cost the job of the man they appointed to give them their identity, Garth Brennan.
The identity crisis has emerged amid a backdrop of significant distraction for the Titans players, who The Sunday Telegraph has learned have added interviews to their training week.
The club’s head of performance and culture, Mal Meninga, is in charge of conducting the ongoing mid-season review.
Seventeen players are being asked for answers about the team dynamics by the Test coach. It’s a position few, let alone a coach in his second season, would survive.
Sitting second-last on the NRL ladder with just three wins ahead of a clash with the Brisbane Broncos at Suncorp Stadium today, Brennan has been around long enough to be aware that despite having next year to run on his current contract, he’s a coach under heavy fire.
But what’s confusing the Brennan believers that do exist on the Gold Coast and within the NRL is that the rookie coach is sticking to the exact plan the Titans board eagerly approved upon his arrival just 20 months ago.
Brennan sold himself to the Titans as a development coach.
Initially, it would be a slow-burn, but eventually like rival development clubs Penrith, Newcastle and most recently Cronulla, the Titans would become a consistent force.
That was the sell.
The board knew that Brennan’s best work was fostering young talent, having spent time as a junior representative coach for four years at Newcastle from 2007, as Penrith’s under-20s coach of the year and the NSW under-18s in 2012 and then NSW Residents coach in 2014.
Brennan helped guide the early careers of Boyd Cordner, Regan Campbell-Gillard, James Roberts and Waqa Blake.
The perennial underachieving Titans saw a way out of the mire in Brennan because they secured him on a three-year deal until 2020.
Speaking to key figures at the club when Brennan was appointed, the board supported his plan to bolster the club’s biggest names with outside recruits, but in the meantime it was about nurturing and developing the club’s best young talent for the NRL.
For too long, the Titans had failed to reap reward from their own backyard.
Talented Cronulla edge-forward and former Tweed Seagulls junior Briton Nikora failing to get an invite to the club before he fled to the Shire is a perfect example.
Everyone at the club knew that the development process was a new way forward for the Gold Coast and that it would take time.
Handed their NRL debuts over the past 10 months, AJ Brimson, Jesse Arthars, Moeaki Fotuaika and Jai Whitbread all fall under Brennan’s “development” coach model.
And such was the intent of the Titans, for the first time in a long time, to begin investing in their own instead of focusing on targeting and pinching the best talent from their rivals, the club linked with Country Rugby League and Northern Rivers area of NSW to build a pathway for under-16s directly to the Gold Coast.
But now without results, the Titans board want a review on a club-wide plan they endorsed - which isn’t even two-years old.
It says more about the club’s constant state of confusion than the under-pressure football department.
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