Great as an Arrow the new benchmark for Titans

Gold Coast coach Garth Brennan told his players they need to play with the same passion as Jai Arrow after the Origin forward racked up Jason Taumalolo-like numbers in a beaten team at Shark Park.

Arrow, who was one of four Gold Coast players to have tries disallowed during the frustrating 20-6 loss to Cronulla at Shark Park, carried the ball for 254 metres from 26 runs, made a line-break, seven tackle breaks, four off-loads and 27 tackles in 70 minutes.

He also had the fastest play-the-ball of any Titans player, averaging 2.76 seconds per play-the-ball to give the Titans player receiving the ball more time before the defence moved up on him.

“Jai Arrow did everything he could out there to try and get us that result and he can hold his head up high, that’s for sure,” Brennan said.

“He’s special, isn’t he. He had a breakout season last year and he has done that again today. He is passionate, he doesn’t say a lot, he leads with his actions and that is why he is such a big part of our football team.

“If everyone else showed as much passion as Jai Arrow showed today the result is probably different.”

Arrow was proud of his performance but disappointed by a loss that Brennan attributed partly to a drop in confidence from his players after Ryan James and Arrow were denied tries by the Bunker.

“I’m not too worried about my stats to be honest, I am a team man and I will always put the team first,” Arrow said.

“If I can put my hand up and take that carry that no one else wants to I will definitely do it and I’ll keep doing it to the best of my ability.”

Brennan refused to blame the absence of injured halves Ash Taylor and Tyrone Roberts, and said his team had created enough opportunities to win the match but failed to capitalise on them.  

“We are a team hoping to win instead of believing we can actually win. We got over the line four times so they have got to take some positives out of that. We won the second half, we have just got to take our opportunities, add a bit of polish there and keep working hard.

“You are going to get things go against you at times but we have got to have a better resolve than we showed.”