Coach John Cartwright blasts Titans

By Matt Marshall

Furious Titans coach John Cartwright slammed his side's lack of professionalism after its 24-18 loss to the last-placed Roosters at Aussie Stadium.

The disappointing defeat condemns the NRL newcomers to back-to-back losses for the first time in their short history.

After four wins from their opening seven games, the Gold Coast has now been soundly beaten in consecutive hitouts, with last Monday's loss to North Queensland followed by a performance Cartwright labelled as his team's worst to date.

Scores, standings, statistics"The first 40 minutes was, if not the worst, one of the worst games of footy I've witnessed - both sides looked like they didn't want to be here," Cartwright said of the game played out in front of just 6246 fans.

"Right from the opening whistle we just didn't look interested, and I thought they were just a bit more interested than we were. It was something we had addressed. We knew it would be a very small crowd.

"Coming here, I've seen it before, with sides who turn up here not quite ready to play because of the lack of atmosphere. But it's not an excuse, there's a lot on the line every week whether there's 100,000 there or 6000 there - these guys have got to perform.

"Every week is so important, especially where we are sitting on the ladder and it just wasn't acceptable today."

A sloppy Gold Coast was ambushed from the outset.

The Roosters bagged two first-half tries but could easily have doubled their tally with winger Amos Roberts bombing a try and standout Test forward Anthony Tupou denied another with a forward pass ruling against Mitchell Pearce.

"It played out how I thought it would if we didn't turn up to play, and we didn't turn up to play," Cartwright said. "I've seen a lot of sides turn up here and create their own mood. We had to do that today to get a victory and we didn't get excited at all."

Immediately after halftime, the Roosters extended their lead.

A slice of magic from fullback Anthony Minichiello - who leaped over the touch line to bat a Titans penalty kick back into play - gave the Roosters possession before Pearce sliced through to send skipper Craig Fitzgibbon over for a 16-0 advantage.

"The Roosters needed to win and we wanted to win, and there's a big difference," Titans co-captain Scott Prince said.

Gold Coast eventually got on the board 50 minutes in, but only because of a clanger from referee Sean Hampstead who missed a clearly forward ball from Prince to Gavin Cooper.

"The try he gave them was disappointing, especially when he took one off us for the same reason, that was pretty poor," Roosters coach Chris Anderson said.

The Titans again pressed before Craig Wing created the match-winner, beating an exhausted Luke Bailey to direct Minichiello under the posts for his timely first try of 2007.

"It was a shit performance, we were ordinary. I wouldn't say we were flat, we were just too keen to win the game ourselves instead of as a team," bullish prop Luke Bailey said. "I don't think it was a matter of us not wanting to be here or playing tired football, I just felt everyone went away from the game-plan and tried to do their own thing."

An ankle injury to Fitzgibbon muted the Roosters' celebrations while Danny Nutley could be charged for a spear tackle on Nathan Friend.

For the Titans, Josh Graham (sternum) will miss Friday night's crunch match against the hapless Dragons.

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