Mitch Rein is relishing his role in the new attacking structures brought in by interim Titans coaches Craig Hodges and Luke Burt.
Rein found his way back in the first-grade side against the Dragons with fellow hooker Nathan Peats out with an ongoing knee complaint, but Rein was pleasantly surprised when he was named at hooker again with Peats at lock the following week against the Eels.
The new combination in the middle of the field looked like a good fit in the first half against the Eels as the Titans went into halftime only six points down.
Rein says the ability to maintain that combination for 80 minutes will come in time through good training.
“We were a bit down on troops, so they needed us both out the for the game and it went well for a while but we couldn’t really maintain that for the whole game,” Rein said. “We did miss a few of our big guys and have been missing them the last few weeks too.
“We combined pretty well at the start, but just couldn’t maintain it and that comes down to our training now. We’ve really been ripping in the last few weeks, so if we start seeing the benefits of that hopefully we can transfer it to a full game instead of just half a game.”
Rein said that despite the losses, the new playing structure has improved the attack and freed the team up to play a better style and motivated them to improve even further.
“I’m loving the way we’re attacking at the moment, it’s given us a chance to move around and take them on up the middle a bit more which has been good,” he said.
“Before we were playing down channels and towards the sideline. But I feel like we’ve opened up the field a bit more and it’s given us a few more attacking opportunities and we saw that when we scored a few more points.”
Rein said the team is building towards a complete performance and is confident it will come – along with a win – before the end of the season.
“Everyone has been saying it. We’ve been training the house down, we’ve upped the intensity and it’s showing in patches of games but we just haven’t transferred fully across,” he said.
“We’ve still got that job to do and the coaches made it clear and so did the leadership group that we didn’t just want to muck around for the last couple of weeks and to make the best of this situation. We just want to rip in and do what we can to get better.”
