Souths cruised to a comfortable 31-8 victory at ANZ Stadium in Round 15 last year, with Dave Taylor starring just a few days after Queensland’s loss to NSW in game two of the State of Origin series.
Taylor’s performance that night looms as a warning to the Titans, who were missing lock Greg Bird just as they are again this week, with the big man involved early as he pulled in a Chris Sandow cross-field kick before passing to James Roberts to score.
Souths made it 12-0 after 22 minutes when Eddy Pettybourne barged over from dummy-half to score and a Sandow penalty goal soon after gave them a handy 14-0 lead at the break.
The Gold Coast hauled their way back into the game after halftime, with David Mead first to a Preston Campbell bomb and Tomane scoring in near-identical fashion just a few minutes later. But with neither conversion successful, Sandow took the opportunity to extend Souths’ lead to seven with 12 minutes remaining before Taylor burst through four defenders to set up Nathan Merritt out wide. Two more tries to Issac Luke and Greg Inglis ensured an easy win for the home side.
The Titans were hurt by missing a whopping 55 tackles while Taylor (192 metres and 10 tackle-breaks) and Rhys Wesser (192 metres and eight tackle-breaks) ran riot against them.
Luke Bailey tried hard for the visitors with 106 metres and 24 tackles.
