On the eve of Round 1, it's hard to find anyone else more excited for kick-off than Brett White.
As one of the NRL's fiercest front rowers to pull on a jersey, the 40-year-old joined the Titans coaching ranks over the off-season as the new minister for defence, with a real intent to help bring a steely edge to the club's armoury after a disappointing 2022 saw an average of 27.5 points conceded per game.
Taking up the clipboard with Canberra at the end of 2015 before his move north for this season, the no nonsense prop has joined with Justin Holbrook in leading a well-publicised transformation of the Coast's defensive systems, which will be on show come Sunday night up against the Tigers at Leichhardt Oval.
Match: Wests Tigers v Titans
Round 1 -
home Team
Wests Tigers
16th Position
away Team
Titans
2nd Position
Venue: Leichhardt Oval, Sydney
It's been an exciting prospect for the Origin and International forward, who has thoroughly enjoyed his time at Parkwood thus far.
"I've loved coming into the club and love working with this group, right through from the staff to the playing group," White told titans.com.au.
"Everyone's eager to change and improve and have bought into the new defensive systems and it's really excited me.
"We know we're not going to be perfect straightaway, but we get a chance to test it again under pressure this week."
Whilst it's one thing to have a new coach bring new ideas to the forefront, the most important element to improvement is buy-in from the playing group, which White has certainly witnessed during the four months of pre-season, alongside the honour they have to pull on the Titans jersey.
"The group have been fantastic... they are so hungry to improve and so hungry to do well for the club," he said.
"There's a lot of pride in this club and I've seen that with the way everyone has bought into try and improve themselves. There's a lot of wanting to be better, which from my point of view makes my job so much easier.
"What excites me about it all is that it's driven from the players ultimately. I can show them whatever they want to need to know, but it's them going out and executing it.
"Their buy-in has been fantastic and that's the most exciting part about it."
Being put to the test in the recent trials period, the former 196-gamer has been impressed with the defensive efforts shown by his new side, but knows there is still plenty of room for improvement particularly up against the talked-about Tigers who are expected to heap plenty of pressure on the visitors come Sunday.
"I was really happy through the trials with certain sections of our trials, particularly the second half against the Broncos. We kept the Broncos scoreless and that was with our younger guys, which shows that everyone buying into the system has paid off," White said.
"Against the Dolphins, there were multiple times where we defended two or three sets on our own line and turn them away, so there's some real positives that have come away from the trials, but we're not the complete package.
"We get to test it under pressure again on Sunday at Leichhardt. It's one of the greatest places in rugby league to play a game of footy, especially on a Sunday.
"We know there's a lot of hype and we know that the Tigers have been talking all pre-season about their attacking ability and everything they've focused on, so it's a real pressure test for our defence and it will let us get a gauge on where we are and where we still need to get better."
