It was another heavy defeat in what has now grown to be a club-record eight game losing streak yet coach Craig Hodges insists the Titans at times showed the traits necessary to be successful in the future.
With three games remaining the Gold Coast look certain to collect the club’s second wooden spoon but Hodges and the coaching staff have been trying to instil characteristics incoming coach Justin Holbrook can build upon.
Only a Kane Evans knock-on prevented the Titans from conceding a try in the opening set of the game but unlike the capitulations of recent weeks they went into half-time trailing by just six points to the finals-bound Eels.
In time the 36-12 final scoreline will read as another blot on a season to forget but Hodges believes there were aspects that can be built upon to carry the club toward success in the not-too-distant future.
"I believe so. I think that's the type of team and club that it needs to become,” Hodges said of the traits displayed in parts of the first half.
"We didn't see them enormously but you start to see some of the traits coming through of successful teams. Not just successful teams of today but successful teams over history.
Match Highlights: Titans v Eels
"There's no coincidence that's why they're successful with those sorts of traits that they've got.
"If we keep working hard on them as a group and a club, success won't be as far away as people think.”
Down 12-6 at half-time, Gold Coast conceded 20 unanswered points as the Eels won their seventh game from their past eight starts to all but guarantee their finals berth, 12 months after finishing dead last.
Buoyed by their first-half performance, Hodges said the second half was indicative of a season that shapes as being the worst in Titans’ history.
Kelly sells the dummy and beats his opposite centre
"The second half probably summed up our season. Your good efforts are undone, some individual efforts aren't up to standard and then it snowballs negatively,” Hodges explained.
"At the moment we struggle – and have done for a while – to string together four or five minutes of football, set-for-set football with the opposition.
"I thought we did that against Parra at times in the first half and just give ourselves a chance to play some football.
"We gave ourselves a chance to get into a genuine game of football and then opportunities come from that.
"The two tries we conceded in the first half came from kicks, they were disappointing for their own reasons, but I genuinely thought we got shoulder to shoulder and brought some kind of commitment defensively.”
In his return from a knee injury Nathan Peats made 55 tackles in an 80-minute performance at lock with hooker Mitch Rein regularly troubling the Eels defence out of dummy half in the first half.
Origin prop Jarrod Wallace missed the game in order to be with his wife who gave birth to a baby girl six weeks premature on Wednesday.
