The Titans are a pretty brutal ‘watch’ this season. A new comer to Rugby League could tune in one week and think to themselves “These guys must be the worst team in the competition” and then the following week they can put on a display like they did against the Warriors at CBUS Super Stadium on Sunday and you could be forgiven for thinking they are title contenders.
Just a week after conceding 30 points to fellow strugglers Newcastle, the Titans stormed home with a 36–12 victory against the New Zealanders – a team they had beaten only once in their last 15 attempts. Not only did the Titans soundly beat the Warriors, but they surely wrestled the ‘Rocks and Diamonds’ title from the Warrior’s grasp as the competition’s most bafflingly inconsistent club in the process.
I was watching that game intently because I had regrettably tipped against the Titans, and with nearly 3 Million dollars worth of halves on display in that game it wasn’t the big earners who dominated the contest.
The Titan’s search for a halves partner for Ash Taylor began in earnest – first they tried Kane Elgey, who can’t tackle; then auditioned Bryce Cartwright, who despite his hulking frame, (suspiciously?!) won’t tackle; before finally giving 19 year old debutant Alexander Brimson the green light in their round 10 matchup with the Melbourne Storm.
The intervening months have been up and down, as you would expect from any young player commencing a career in first grade on a team languishing in the bottom half of the ladder – but what has been present has been incremental improvement and growth.
However, in their round 20 clash with the Warriors, Brimson’s game all came together and his fingerprints were all over the demolition of the Warrior’s right edge defence:
Far from looking out of place amongst the million-dollar-men playing in the halves, for large chunks of the game Brimson actually outplayed Shaun Johnson and Ash Taylor.
The praise on twitter for the young halve was effusive:
The last two tweets raise an interesting point. It would appear that Taylor is struggling with the burden that comes with being the highest paid player at the club – on the opposite team, Shaun Johnson has also had his fair share of detractors since becoming the biggest contract on the books.
Get The 12&UNDERTAKER’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Soon after Taylor put pen to paper on his new contract, Ben Ikin opined that the young halve would have to work hard on and off the field to earn the money he was being paid, and thus far the results have been inconclusive at best.
For both Taylor and Johnson, the talent is obvious to anyone who watches them play, but both seem satisfied to dominate moments of games rather than bend an entire game to their will through sheer effort the way the true greats do.
Ikin’s reference to Taylor’s contract being Thurston-money is apt – if Taylor needs any example of what it takes to win it all then he need look no further than Thurston’s performance in the second half of the Grand Final in 2015, where he continued to throw himself at the line searching for an opening long after his tank was empty.
There is a considerable amount of research on this topic which is scientifically referred to as the “Growth Mindset”. It contends that people who are praised for innate ability or talent fixate on performance and shy away from taking risks that may result in failure, while those who are praised for their effort develop a mindset for sustained growth.
In other words, players such as Taylor and Johnson who get all the praise for their talent (and the contract to match) early in their careers end up watching the Grand Final from the comfort of their couch, while players like Thurston torture themselves out on the field, wringing every last ounce effort out of their bodies — even if it is not enough to prevail.
Taylor lists Thurston as his inspiration, and while he possesses many of the traits to emulate JT’s exploits on the field, there seems to be an unwillingness to match his work ethic. Thurston dominated the league for more than a decade whilst being held together with duct tape and there is little evidence to suggest that Taylor possesses that same indomitable character.
Taylor has the type of talent the clubs will pay a premium for irrespective of the attitude that comes with it. However, unless he recognises that the difference between success and failure is not talent, but effort, there will be plenty more days like Sunday – where a player like Brimson scoops up all the accolades despite his comparatively lesser talent. Whether Taylor is OK with that will decide how close he gets to emulating his idol JT.
THE PICKS:
After leaving ourselves the difficult task of only having the Sunday games to choose from, we picked up our first donut of the season. If you had told me it would take 20 rounds for that to happen I think we would have been pretty happy with that. Let’s get back on track this week with a full slate to chose from.
