Remember the Titans? How Holbrook found a pulse at the Gold Coast

Justin Holbrook hears the chatter around the Gold Coast. The murmurs are a constant background noise when he’s having coffee at a beachside cafe, stalking the sidelines of a junior carnival or just man-handling a trolley around the supermarket.

And no, it’s not all about the prospect of Cameron Smith parachuting in from a Blackhawk 10 seconds before kick-off in their first match of the season. There’s something else brewing, something that started to ferment when Smith was still chasing another title with the Storm.

Justin Holbrook (left) wanted to foster a winning culture from the day he set foot on the Gold Coast.Credit:Getty

The unflattering backround noise is hardly unusual to those involved in the club. For the best part of its existence, the Titans have shifted the dial somewhere between “dire” and “inconsequential” and its small core of hardy fans have had no shortage of fodder for their frustrations. Often, the club has been such a minor blip on the NRL radar that more than a fair share of southern supporters would rather it gone altogether.

Yet what Holbrook is hearing this time around is something different, something that has been in short supply for most of the Gold Coast’s chequered history. Listen carefully … that sounds like … hope.

“What I hear at the moment is that people are excited about the season and looking forward to coming to the games. For myself and the players, that’s what we want to try and achieve,” Holbrook says. “We finished well last year and we want to get a bit of hype around this season.

“We want the people of the Gold Coast to get excited about football again. I can’t guarantee how we’re going to go but at least there’s a lot of interest out there, which is great for us.”

Hype? Titans? It’s been a while since that those two words have been required in a sentence. Still, that’s precisely what is happening on the Gold Coast, who are now the clear alphas in a Queensland rugby league Bizarro World that has seen the once-bulletproof Broncos stripped of their super powers.

After nine wins last season, which left them just shy of the finals, the Titans are expected to be major movers in 2021. Holbrook has been at the heart of the revival, to the point where the Gold Coast’s now stable and capable management – that’s a major change in itself – regard him as something as a supercoach-in-waiting.

Already, he has completed the best pair of off-season signings in former Storm middle and now Maroons Origin hardman Tino Fa’asuamaleaui and the destructive David Fifita, whose high-profile defection from the Broncos has become a metaphore for the current state of affairs at Red Hill.

Those additions, combined with a highly encouraging finish to the 2020 season, has seen Holbrook and his players head into 2021 laden with expectations that they will return to the finals at long last. That’s a good thing, says the coach, who not only wants validation for his methods but respect from rival clubs and fans.

“We want people to have expectations for us, both within our club and fans and members. And also oppositions … the whole rugby league community has put a few expectations on us and are thinking we’re going to do well, rather than be surprised by it.

Ash Taylor, left, has already been one of Holbrook’s success stories.Credit:Getty

“We have to play well but I’d much rather have that than the year before when people were talking about whether we should even be in the competition.

“People want to support us but that’s hard if they can see we aren’t giving our best. That was the biggest thing I wanted to change. It’s just having the ability to show our own people that we are in the fight every week. That’s all the fans want to see.

“For me, we went some way to proving that later in the year and that has given us a big lift going into the season. We want some credibility and stability, which I think we have through the whole club from the front office to the playing group.”

Defeatism can spread like a virus through sporting teams. Just as winning becomes a habit, the losing cycle sometimes seems impossible to snap when every ball bounces the wrong way and every match brings a new injury or dose of hard luck. Once a club is stuck in a flat spin, it’s either hit eject or bite the dust.

Holbrook was having none of that when he arrived back in Australia after a successful stint coaching St Helens in England. Given everything he has at the Titans’ disposal – a huge junior base, a quality training headquarters, their own stadium – it simply didn’t make sense to him that the club should be a perennial basket case.

“I knew it could work and I had conversations with [head of performance] Mal [Meninga] around all of that. We’ve got so many juniors playing in the area, the Burleigh Bears had won the Queensland Cup, I knew it could work. I knew this was a great nursery for the game so it was up to us to get our house in order and make this a real option for young players and fans,” Holbrook said.

“I can understand why people would say that [to relocate the Titans] in the past. The club hadn’t done well. You are going to pick on the sides that aren’t doing well if change is in the air. But we want to prove we don’t just belong but are going to thrive and do well. All that talk stops then and now we just have to make sure all the kids here on our patch want to play for the Titans.

“I know other clubs come up here and run clinics and all that stuff in our area for a region. We need to look after our own backyard first and foremost.”

It wasn’t just the players that Holbrook has helped attract that has bolstered his standing but the improvement in those under his tutelage. AJ Brimson, when he was able to take the field amid a run of injuries, would soar into the Maroons side and Ash Taylor, the troubled playmaker who never quite found a way to fulfil a price tag pinned on him well before he was ready, rediscovered some joy in the game.

He plucked Jamal Fogarty from the tier down and helped not only fashion him into a rock solid playmaking option at seven but a team captain.

Holbrook is a details coach, like one of his mentors Trent Robinson, but has the gift of selling the simple message: “You have to, if they players don’t believe in what you’re saying there’s no chance they can get out there and do it.”

He doesn’t live and breathe rugby league and won’t be reviewing video at 3am. He likes his players to get away from the game, as well, but makes sure they understand that it’s time to get to work when they arrive at training. On that front, he already likes what he sees. What coach doesn’t at this time of year?

“I do see more. I’ve had confidence they could play better and they have that self-belief now. Everyone says they are training well before the season but you can feel that now … you can see it. You look for the actions of the players and they are driving each other. There’s a real sense of confidence in the group knowing what’s possible.”

There will be even more confidence if a certain veteran number nine decides to show up for a kick around.

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