THE Gold Coast Titans could have considered themselves unlucky last week not to have picked up two competition points when a field goal on the siren handed them defeat.
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There were no such thoughts, however, on Saturday at Carrington Park.
Virtually the same Titans side who were brave in their 19-18 defeat to the West Tigers seven days earlier were comprehensivley beaten 40-0 by the Penrith Panthers.
As the Panthers celebrated posting back-to-back wins to start a season for the first time since 2006, the Titans were left to rue an error-riddled performance.
It was the second half that really hurt the Titans as they conceded another six tries after only trailing 8-0 at the break.
“We deserved it. I think we were three [completions] from 11 [sets] in the second half,” Titans coach Neil Henry said.
“Six tries in the second half is not good enough.
“I was very happy that we created opportunities and 8-0 at half-time, I thought we were in a game of football and they knew it as well.
“But we just didn’t get any continuity from our attack in the second half and we strayed from our game plan. In the end we didn’t control our possession and we turned the ball over early in our counts, so we wasted opportunities to play the ball.”
Though the Titans made the trip to Bathurst hopeful of a win, they were undoubtedly the underdogs.
Aside from not managing to defeat the Panthers last year, Greg Bird, Dave Taylor, Beau Falloon, Kalifa Faifai Loa and Jamie Dowling were all unavailable for selection given the cocaine charges still hanging over their heads.
Henry also lost winger Kevin Gordon in the build-up as he broke his nose in a training accident.
Those that did take to the field made a bright enough start.
The Titans had two tries disallowed by the video referee in the first 20 minutes as they had the Panthers under pressure.
Instead it was the Panthers who opened the scoring and ended up running rampant.
While Henry tried to see the positives, he knew the effort was well below par.
The Titans had a 52 per cent completion rate for the match, had two line breaks to Penrith’s eight, were on the wrong side of an 11-7 penalty count and had 33 missed tackles.
“We played some enterprising football at times. I think we needed some early points, but had a couple of disallowed tries. They didn’t go our way and that would have put a bit of confidence in the side,” Henry said.
“There’s no doubt there’s been a lot of distractions but we can’t sit here and make excuses for that performance.”
