With Des Hasler out the door, Josh Hannay has a titanic rebuild on his hands at the Gold Coast. 

JOSH Hannay has just inherited arguably the hardest job in Australian rugby league: coach of the Gold Coast Titans.    

Since inaugural boss John Cartwright fell on his sword in 2014, the Titans have had four full-time coaches. 

Only Neil Henry (in 2016) and Justin Holbrook (in 2021) have scraped into the play-offs in eighth. Garth Brennan and the outgoing Des Hasler never reached the post-season games. 

In 19 seasons, they’ve mustered just one finals win way back in 2010. 

Landing Tino Fa’asuamaleaui and David Fifita in 2021 was meant to solve that. Instead, the club remains at a low ebb. 

Hannay comes in after a horror 2025. The Titans won just six games in 2025, spared the wooden spoon only by Newcastle’s inferior points differential. It follows just eight wins in 2024, nine in 2023 and six in 2022. 

They bled 719 points — an average of 30 a game — across the campaign, the only team to leak more than 700. 

Only the most ardent optimist will give new man Hannay a chance of turning the ship around. 

At the time of writing, Kurtis Morrin — a Canterbury fringe player — is the Titans’ only recruit for 2026. 

Gone is 318-game veteran playmaker Kieran Foran, although he will lend his substantial rugby league IQ to Hannay’s coaching staff. 

Decorated ex-Leeds coach Brian McDermott, who has recently served under outgoing Newcastle coach Adam O’Brien, may join them according to Queensland newspaper the Courier Mail. 

On the park, whispers of more departures perpetually haunt the cellar dwellers. 

Star forward Fifita is apparently being shopped to rival NRL clubs, captain Fa’asuamaleaui is being targeted by the Perth Bears for their maiden season in 2027 and Reagan Campbell-Gillard has been linked to the Super League. 

2023 Dally M second-rower of the year Fifita is contracted until the end of 2026 on a deal reportedly worth nearly $1 million (£480,000) a season, but managed just eight games in 2025 due to a combination of form and fitness. 

The Titans are staving off interest in 25-year-old halfback Jayden Campbell — son of club legend Preston — who will expect a salary bump when his current deal ends next year. 

At least key playmakers Keano Kini and AJ Brimson are locked away long term. 

Investing so much of the salary cap in a handful of big names leaves the Gold Coast especially vulnerable to injury and State of Origin absence — and their on-field struggles force them to constantly fend off rumours those best players are eyeing a move away. 

Of course, a new coach always brings fresh hope. 

Supporting Hannay are key off-field appointments Scott Sattler as director of football and Anthony Laffranchi as head of recruitment. 

But the main man himself is a relatively unknown quantity. 

Hailing from coal-mining country in Central Queensland, Hannay was an honest goal-kicking centre who notched 150 games for the North Queensland Cowboys, earning two Maroons jumpers in the process. 

An ill-fated move to Cronulla in 2007 paved his way to the Celtic Crusaders, helping the Welsh club earn promotion to the Super League before a visa bungle sent him home. 

After finishing his playing career in the Queensland Cup then his home-town club Moranbah, Hannay cut his teeth as a coach with Souths Logan in the Queensland competition. 

The late Paul Green then took the ex-Cowboy onto his North Queensland coaching staff, and Hannay took the top job on an interim basis after Green’s resignation in 2020. 

When Todd Payten beat him to the Cowboys’ permanent gig, Hannay repeated his move to Cronulla — and found himself caretaker once again when John Morris was sacked early in the 2021 season. 

Hannay stuck around on Craig Fitzgibbon’s coaching staff, and joined Billy Slater’s Maroons staff too. 

That long apprenticeship has led to the 45-year-old getting his first full-time NRL coaching role at the Titans from 2026. 

To describe it as a challenge is an understatement. 

Nearly two decades after their inception, the Titans struggle for results and relevance. 

While the Dolphins have entered the comp up the road and immediately found huge crowds both at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane and the boutique Kayo Stadium in Redcliffe, the Titans battle for fans. 

Attendance topped 20,000 just twice this year: for the visits of the Broncos in Round 19 then the Warriors in Round 25, when away fans packed the stands of Cbus Super Stadium. 

These existential questions have dogged franchises on the so-called Glitter Strip ever since the Gold Coast-Tweed Giants entered the Premiership in 1988. 

The Giants became the Seagulls in 1990, the Gladiators (briefly) in 1996, then the Chargers until their final season in 1998, when they were put out of their misery. 

Whichever colours they wore, on-field success and off-field cachet eluded them. 

The Titans entered the NRL in 2007 with a wave of fresh energy but it’s proved difficult to shake off the pall of the past. 

Their geography doesn’t help. 

The Gold Coast is Australia’s sixth largest city, but its transient population isn’t conducive to building consistent support. 

It’s labelled the Glitter Strip for a reason. This is a place where Australians go on holiday, to play golf or surf or party or visit Sea World. It’s the home of ‘Schoolies’, when school leavers arrive in their thousands to let their hair down after final exams. 

Permanent residents are spread out across glistening towers looming over the Surfers Paradise sand, retirement homes, quiet villages in the mountainous hinterland and beachy suburbs near the New South Wales border. 

It doesn’t help that the Titans’ home ground is 15 kilometres away from the city centre, next door to a creek and a hospital. 

Or that they’re just an hour’s drive down the road from Brisbane, where the Broncos (and now the Dolphins) run the show. 

These are all factors Josh Hannay cannot control. 

What the new coach can do is build a team that notches a few more wins on the pitch — which of course is the best way to get people through the gates and force naysayers to respect their existence. 

The challenge begins in six months’ time, when the new-look Titans kick off yet another new era. 

First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 513 (October 2025)