The Gold Coast Titans’ incoming head coach says the embattled NRL club needs to build a distinctive identity as it looks to recover from a dismal season.<\/p>\n
Josh Hannay will replace Des Hasler next season \u2014 a year before Hasler’s contract was due to end and three months after Titans’ owner Rebecca Frizelle said: “We want him here until the end of 2026.”<\/p>\n
It also comes just two years after Justin Holbrook was sacked as head coach.<\/p>\n
Hannay said he recognised the “enormous challenge” in front of him.<\/p>\n
“The best teams in this competition have a clearly identifiable style of play \u2014 it’s there for everybody to see when they take the field,” Hannay said.<\/p>\n
“I want to develop an identity for the club that resonates with the people of the Gold Coast and all the fans that support the Titans.”<\/p>\n
Hannay has been the Cronulla Sharks’ assistant coach, under Craig Fitzgibbon, since 2021.<\/p>\n
He has also worked as assistant to Billy Slater’s Queensland Origin side, winning three of the past four titles.<\/p>\n
No ‘rose-coloured glasses’<\/p>\n
The Titans sit at the bottom of the NRL ladder, losing their past four games and winning just five this season.<\/p>\n
Hannay, like his predecessor, will seek to reverse what has been an ongoing struggle for the Titans to perform at finals level.<\/p>\n
They finished 14th in 2024 and in 2023, a long way from 2010’s preliminary final.<\/p>\n
Hannay said he was not coming to the role with “rose-coloured glasses on”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Titans coach Des Hasler coached Manly Sea Eagles to their 2013 grand final win. (AAP: Dave Hunt)<\/p>\n
“There’s an opportunity there to do something that’s just not been achieved before by the club, which is A: go to a grand final and B: win a competition,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Where the club sits currently, that naturally looks a long way away.”<\/p>\n
Hannay said the Titans should look to the Maroons to build a distinctive style of play.<\/p>\n
“[Queensland] have been synonymous for the way they play, the grit they play with \u2014 very identifiable traits,” Hannay said.<\/p>\n
“That’s something that started in 1980, and it’s still there today.”<\/p>\n
Recruitment decisions<\/p>\n
Former Penrith player Scott Sattler will return to the club as its new director of football \u2014 the second time he has held the senior administrative role.<\/p>\n
“We have to put a team together, not only on the field but off the field, that knows what success looks like,” Sattler said.<\/p>\n
“In rugby league, there’s one currency that we talk in and that is winning \u2014 a lot of the time, fans won’t accept anything less.”<\/p>\n
But he said some previous recruitment decisions had been “astute” while others “have probably left the club in a hole, especially from a salary-cap point of view”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Titans lost to the Panthers here in round 22, earlier in August. (Getty Images: Chris Hyde)<\/p>\n
“[This] doesn’t give you the ability to go to market and negotiate with certain players,” Sattler said.<\/p>\n
“But also it’s about the people that are around the club and whether they’ve been involved in the modern game.”<\/p>\n
Hannay said the Titans had a “rich nursery” of young players.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of untapped talent underneath that no-one’s yet seen.”<\/p>\n
Hannay will begin his three-year contract with the Titans after he ends the 2025 season with the Sharks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Gold Coast Titans’ incoming head coach says the embattled NRL club needs to build a distinctive identity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,13284,69302,162,2485,18387,70722,158,85,13338,22958],"class_list":["post-96057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-coaching","tag-des-hasler","tag-dolphins","tag-gold-coast","tag-josh-hannay","tag-new-titans-coach","tag-nrl","tag-sports","tag-tigers","tag-titans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}