Well said Lee!

Fans' wish list for new owners
http://www.gcbulletin.com.au

Commandeering the Keebra Park pathway is among the big-ticket items on the wish list of Gold Coast rugby league fans. As the NRL prepares to sell the club to private owners, the Bulletin spoke with diehard fans Rhonda Toms and Lee Dungey to uncover the key issues supporters want to see addressed.

JUNIOR DEVELOPMENT

“There’s been a lot of talk that we have got 6000 juniors et cetera, you can’t let that go, but there is always that throwaway line that the Broncos have got more money than the Titans and snap up a lot of the good young fellas. I’d like to see that addressed,” Dungey said. He’s had enough of seeing the Coast’s best and brightest products tearing apart the Titans on the field. Dungey wants more of a juniors-to-Titans pathway developed, including the club linking with Southport-based league nursery Keebra Park State High School, who currently are affiliated with Canterbury. “That’s an absolute joke,” he said. “We have got Palm Beach Currumbin and we have got the other league schools on the Gold Coast that are starting to take off now but it’s a bit embarrassing when you have got Keebra Park in your own backyard (feeding elsewhere).”

SOME CERTAINTY

Time after time through the past 11 seasons – not to mention previous Gold Coast NRL guises – fans have had their club’s future come into question.

It was less than three years ago that the Titans were placed into voluntary administration.

At various points, the club has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, most recently relating to the public feud between Jarryd Hayne and Neil Henry.

Fans like Toms, a member of The Legion, want such distractions to be a thing of the past. “We want calm,” she said.

“Calm as in with that sustainability and capacity to be moving forward and just be concentrating on the game and the club’s growth as a whole. Not the uncertainty.

“As long-standing fans, I think that’s probably what most want and to see us moving forward in the right direction.”

FAN ENGAGEMENT

Some reluctant visits to Suncorp Stadium up the road have given Dungey an insight into the aura he’d like to see form at Cbus Super Stadium.

It also showed him the way other clubs treat their loyal supporters. “You will see a lot of ex-Broncos walking around talking to everybody,” he said.

“I would like to see the Titans have lots of ex-Titans players walking around engaging people.

“Players like Nathan Friend, even Matty Petersen still lives in the area, Mat Rogers is passionate and wants to get involved. More engagement of fans.”

COMMUNITY BUY-IN

There have been murmurs of the Frizelle-Kelly consortium being open to a community buy-in concept down the track.

“I know many members would like to do that,” Dungey said. “My wife and I bought seats and there are many members like us that bought seats – we feel like we’re stakeholders of the club and I would like us a bit more addressed.

“I would like us to have a bit more recognition and have a chance to be able to add value to the club and anything like a members subcommittee formed so that they are getting the voice of members and fans heard.”

OVERALL STABILITY

Regardless, both Toms and Dungey are certain the NRL have backed the right horse.

Australian sport has had a less than desirable past with rich sole owners – and local businesspeople Frizelle and Kelly, as the faces of their consortium, have won fans over already.

“What we want is that stability,” Toms said. “Bec’s consortium is the right consortium. The one thing that they certainly have shown and demonstrated is their loyalty.

“They have done a pretty good job too at getting all of that front-of-house stuff better and better.”