2021 Squad, Signings and Rumours Thread

[indoallstars]

Love the post, I get a smile counting down the days until the season kicks off

[hungryjacks]

Feels like we are creating a team at the moment the general public can like personally aswell, not just a bunch of journeymen and NSW like we used to do

[Mr Bods]

You know what happened last time the forum was all buoyant about an upcoming season.
I’m just taking it one game at a time and wanting to get through all stars and trials unscathed.

[DIEHARD]

Every offseason in the weeks and months leading up to the new season I get chills just by thinking about the new season, the possibilities, the amazing stories, the ugly ones, the shock contenders, the unexpected failures, and most importantly what the **** is going to happen with my beloved titans this year.

This offseason has been like no other; whenever I think about our chances a feeling just blossoms within me leaving me unable to stop a smile from crawling across my face. It is an indescribable feeling that I'm sure most avid NRL fans have felt. I am excited, I am excited about our chances. I am excited about my chances to prove my Bronco friends wrong and I am excited about the exciting brand of football this group of exciting footballers is going to display this season. I might get proven wrong, I might get disappointed even more by this club, but I really have a feeling I won't. New players are good, but it is the coaching staff and the culture that I am most excited about. I have been following all the players on Instagram and the players, especially Tino and David, seem so close. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the panthers this year. A young team proving everyone wrong by being able to surpass the barrier of limited experience by having a strong culture where all the players were in sync and playing for each other. I don't expect 2020 Penrith like results but I am just excited, optimistic maybe, about the prospect of how well we could go this year.

Sorry for the rant but the next 38 days couldn't go quick enough

also didn't know where to post this but this seemed like the general thread for titans related stuff

100th post aswell by the way

I loved reading this. It's what being a fan is about and it's something we have long suffered without.

New players are good, but it is the coaching staff and the culture that I am most excited about.

I agree. I feel the culture building, although I don't follow the players on Insta. I'm excited to hear that there are close bonds. We can all remember moments when it looked and felt like our team was a team of strangers.

[hungryjacks]

Me too, i have PTSD and am going to be like Buddha and just take it one game at a time.

Also us older Titans fans would remember back in the early days we used to have amazing starts to the season and taper off towards the end, wareful of this too.

So like if Buddha was a Titans fan, one game at a time.

[FalconSloth]

Last year I wouldnt get excited until the final siren had gone. we were up by about 20 points verse the broncos with 5 minutes to go and i was still as nervous as i was at the start. In saying that, hopefully this year we can show our class and change that stereotype around this year

[DIEHARD]

Titans hooker Erin Clark opens up: ’Contract saved my life’
https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/sport/nrl/

ERIN Clark was 20kg overweight with a young family and no career prospects outside of his job labouring for a New Zealand landscaping firm when a lifeline from the Gold Coast Titans saved his life.

Clark was one of New Zealand’s most promising junior halfbacks, stuck behind Shaun Johnson at the Warriors, when a position switch to hooker set his career on a different path.

After signing with Canberra in search of game time the 20-year-old lost his passion for the game and requested a release to return to NZ after only five months.

“Being so young, coming out of school and straight into an NRL system was like I’d missed out on being a kid,” Clark said.

“My partner was pregnant with my son back home and everything just fell down.

“I wanted to be around my son so I went home.”

Clark picked up a menial job and for a year embraced his new existence – he would leave Erin Clark the footy star behind to become Erin Clark, the working-class dad.

It was a different life but the freedom he expected to find didn’t come as he imagined.

After a year Clark’s focus was snapped away from just himself.

“A real changing moment was I was lying on my bed with my son, who was still really young,” he said.

“When I was looking at him I knew I had to give him something.

“I know there’s something more for me and I want to give you a good life.”

Clark called his manager, who put him in touch with Titans recruitment manager Ezra Howe – the same man who signed him to Canberra - to beg for another chance.

Howe offered him that chance with one condition: If he could shed all 20kg by the time he arrived on the Titans’ doorstep a pre-season train-and-trial contract was his.

Clark, then 22, was so impressive upon his arrival that the club signed him to a two-year extension within eight weeks of arriving.

“It kind of saved my life,” he said.

“I wasn’t happy when I was away from footy. When I came back I realised this is what I was here to do.

“I’m not where I want to be yet and I’ve still got a long way to go but I’m happy with the steps I’m taking to give my son and my daughter a good life.”

With a stronger support network on the Coast Clark is ready to continue his growth as a hooker, despite new rules changing the game.

“The No.9 has to be the fittest player on the field now, *especially with the new rules,” he said.

“It’s a tough role because you’ve got to be more fit, more mobile, but that’s what I’ve been working on this pre-*season and I’m trying my best.”

JAMAL FOGARTY’S INCREDIBLE TRANSFORMATION
JAMAL Fogarty is beefed up and ready to take on the NRL as a running threat for the first time as the Gold Coast Titans halfback.

Fogarty’s 12-month transformation from club football playmaker to muscle-bound NRL star is nearing completion.

Since joining the club in the latter half of the 2020 pre-season Fogarty has punched above his weight but is now ready to dish out the hits of his own – especially if he gets the chance to take on his football nemesis, Canberra Raider Josh Papalii.

Fogarty has not yet lived down the ignominy of being cut down from behind by the Maroons prop, which is one of many reasons he has tackled an off-season in the gym with gusto.

“I cop it from our middles every session we do speed,” Fogarty said.

“Even people in public will come up to me like, ‘You’re the guy Papalii ankle-tapped’ and I have to be like, ‘yeah, that’s me.’

“We’ve been doing a bit of speedwork technique down on the field so hopefully I can get the benefits in the season.

“If I do make a linebreak I know to run to the corner post this time and not keep running straight.”

Fogarty hits the gym four times a week, with two sessions on his upper body and two for his lower body, on top of the Titans work on the field.

He has added three kilograms of muscle while reducing his skinfolds testing results, which measure bodyfat percentage.

Fogarty says that muscle mass, combined with his speed training, will allow him to take on defenders in the line and put on a big hit or two of his own in 2021.

“Hopefully a bit more size can get me one or two linebreaks this year or help me tackle the big fellas coming down my edge,” he said.

“Last year I was just going with what was happening but this year I feel as though I belong in the team.

“Hopefully my performances can go up a notch each week with a couple more linebreaks, a bit more running and slowing those big boys down (in defence).”

Fogarty was a potent runner with the Burleigh Bears in 2019, winning the Intrust Super Cup’s most valuable player award, but was content to find his feet as a ballplayer in the top grade.

Burleigh coach Rick Stone said Fogarty looked poised to throw off those shackles in his second season.

“I didn’t think we saw a lot of Jamal’s running last year which was understandable because he was finding his feet,” Stone said.

“As he gets confident and a better understanding of the six-again rule he’ll spot more opportunities to run.

“He’s put on a few kilos (of muscle), found his feet and everyone will see more of his running game if he gets a chance this year.”

The Titans are in red-hot shape at the close of January, with major credit owed to the team’s new strength and conditioning staff led by High Performance Manager Klint Hoare.

He, along with the Titans nutrition team, have helped implement training and diet strategies that have turbocharged their development, particularly in the case of Fogarty.

Eliminating soft drinks and dessert from his diet, portion control at mealtime and restricting bingeful ‘cheat days’ into naughty meals has been the key.

“The S&C staff have brought heaps of energy to the playing group as a staff, and as players we like seeing that,” Fogarty said.

“It makes us want to rip in when the coaches are coming in upbeat and we’re happy to work hard for them.

“Every is enjoying training, everyone is coming in smiling. The place is in a real good spot at the moment.”

PBC MATESHIP PUT ON ICE FOR FORMER TEAMMATES

Jamal Fogarty and Jahrome Hughes were like yin and yang at the Gold Coast’s famous Palm Beach Currumbin State High School in 2011.

Neither wore the No.7 jersey for school but nine years later PBC’s odd couple will find themselves head-to-head on the NRL stage, opposing halfbacks for the first time.

It’s been an eventful decade for both the indigenous kid from Beaudesert and the Maori boy from Wellington, who together powered PBC to the 2011 Queensland title from five-eighth and fullback respectively.

On the field they could scarcely be further apart.

In the 2011 state decider Hughes scored the game’s opening try against Keebra Park with a 105 metre runaway.

The fullback fancied himself as a ballplayer but he didn’t pass once from tryline to tryline.

Fogarty was the organiser who passed and passed and passed.

“There was no jealousy there, no ‘I’m better than you,’” coach Phil Sutherland said of their sparkling schoolboy connection.

“Both of them were incredible young men, humble, quiet, unassuming and they just gelled.

“They were like that here and they’re still the same respectful young men.”

Their paths to Friday night’s blockbuster between the Storm and Titans at Sunshine Coast Stadium have been difficult as well.

Hughes signed with the Roosters, then Titans, the Cowboys and in 2017 the Storm where he played 44 NRL matches. Fogarty had to wait until 2017 for his first NRL game with the Titans and even longer to lock down his starting jersey this year.

Both have served their apprenticeships and have emerged stronger for it, their old coach said.

“Jahrome has learned to channel his brilliance where it best fits,” Sutherland said.

“He still plays a little off the cuff despite the Storm’s structure.

“Jamal is doing a great job getting the Titans around the park. It’s hard for oppositions to work him out because he’s always popping up in new places.”

Their friendships will be left on the sideline when battle begins, and Fogarty vowed he wouldn’t shirk a chance to let his old mate feel the sting.

“It’s been a while since we were teammates and his game has developed a lot since we were at school together,” the Titans halfback said.

“If he gives me the opportunity to tackle him I’m going to tackle him.

“I’m sure he’ll do the same for me as well.”

[DIEHARD]

WATCH HERE: THE AUDITION TAPE CLARK SENT TO TITANS

[Titanic]

There is a huge difference between living on the prayer of a jaded marquee player dragging a group of over-rated toilers into the stratosphere and backing a united group of talented athletes coached properly ... I’m very comfortable to have high expectations and to be able to debate those expectations based on solid logic rather than wishful thinking. Sink or swim I just can’t wait.

[T0ken]

https://7news.com.au/sport/rugby-lea...7DexbrzP7g2kwA

It’s about to get spicy

NRL salary chiefs OK for Gold Coast Titans to sign Cameron Smith on 600k/year

We will see if Cameron wants to play on but given that the NRL is ok with it means someone has specifically asked the question

[JunctionBlock]

https://www.sen.com.au/news/2021/02/...cameron-smith/

NRL GIVES TITANS GREEN LIGHT TO CHASE CAMERON SMITH

[Upthetits]

Someone from the clubs asked the question. Its happening lads, im expecting an announcement in the next week or 2

[Hail Sezer]

Someone from the clubs asked the question. Its happening lads, im expecting an announcement in the next week or 2

Wasn’t it Andrew Webster who asked the question for his story?

[gotitans101_]

yeah i'm not getting the hype tbh

[Upthetits]

Touche, disregard my comment