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Even with a variety of State of Origin stars absent, the stage was well and truly set for a cracker of a match at Cbus Super Stadium on a glorious Sunday afternoon, with the Gold Coast Titans playing host to the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.
Having won their last three games against the Bulldogs – who were without six of their best in James Graham, Josh Jackson, David Klemmer, Trent Hodkinson and the Morris twins – and coming off the back of an impressive victory over the Wests Tigers a week earlier, Titans fans should have been trembling with excitement and anticipation for a massive upset victory.
Led by playmaker Aiden Sezer, himself a Bulldogs junior, the Titans were able to pull off a brilliant 28-14 win after holding off an onslaught from Canterbury’s scale-breaking big men.
The Titans proceeded to show that size really doesn’t matter when it comes to rugby league in 2015, with their outside backs – particularly the notoriously quick James Roberts – burning holes in the Bulldogs’ tiring defensive line on numerous occasions.
While the Bulldogs fought hard to cover for the absence of their MCG-bound Origin players, they simply were not good enough to prevent the Titans from making yet another statement on their thoughts concerning the infamous Daly Cherry-Evans backflip.
Without doubt, it was an excellent victory, but it didn’t come without disappointment. For a crowd of only 10,645 – at least 6000 of which were in blue and white – to show up to witness such a fantastic display of rugby league speaks volumes of the tragic situation transpiring on the Gold Coast.
Similarly to the way in which the low-profile Tennessee Titans of the United States’ NFL are set to gain an identity thanks to the drafting of exciting young quarterback, Marcus Mariota, the Gold Coast’s signing of DCE finally had the club on the cusp of bringing rugby league to life for the first time on the holiday strip.
Yet due to his backflip, the Titans find themselves right back in square one – struggling to draw a decent crowd.
With DCE’s prized signature on their books for 2016, it looked as though the Gold Coast Titans were set to pull off a feat that the American competition, considered to be the model for the NRL to work towards, has long been unable to do – establish a team in the warmer, picturesque cities of the country.
Los Angeles has always been somewhat of a graveyard for NFL franchises, with the competition failing a number of times, with a fruitless Oakland Raiders’ relocation to LA being one of many failed attempts. Akin to this scenario, the NRL has also been unsuccessful in locking down a club in their own glamour city of the Gold Coast, with the Chargers not managing to survive, and now the Titans being on their last legs despite the backing of the NRL.
And so the question must be asked – does rugby league belong on the Gold Coast?
It could be argued that with such a large population on the holiday strip, the potential always remains for the Titans franchise to become a success, and withdrawing the club from the Gold Coast and relocating them elsewhere is giving the AFL’s Suns a free-kick.
Of course, relocation may well be more beneficial to the game than hoping and praying that one day the Titans become a success. In addition to Perth and another New Zealand-based club, a second Brisbane team is an absolute necessity, considering that not a single game of NRL is played in the so-called ‘heartland’ of rugby league when the Broncos have an away fixture.
But if the NFL hasn’t been able to achieve it, albeit for slightly different reasons, what hope does the NRL have?
Maybe it’s time to stop drawing comparisons to the NFL. After all, it’s a different competition based in a different environment, and the NRL’s success does not and will not stem from the same roots.
And so, I remain in the firm belief that the Titans are nothing more than a couple of marquee signings away from reinvigorating Gold Coast rugby league.
The club should be afforded the continuous backing of the NRL, and with the acquisition of a player similar to the stature of Israel Folau, the Titans should be enjoying the warmth of Surfers Paradise for many years to come.
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