Clutch moments just a walk in the Pizzey Park for Brown

Whenever the pressure is on in the critical moments, Lauren Brown’s mind wanders to her happy place.

For a split-second, it goes some six kilometres from Cbus Super Stadium to Pizzey Park, home of the Burleigh Bears, where she can still be found on occasion doing extras “just in case”.

Some 24 hours from sealing the Titans’ place in the NRLW finals with a golden point field goal, Brown was there, where her rugby league journey began, secretly potting field goals and practicing goal kicks that ultimately proved the difference in the 17-16 win.

No doubt there will be plenty more memories of sunny days and light sea breezes at Burleigh for Brown to fall back to when the Titans find themselves in another sudden-death game against Newcastle at McDonald Jones Stadium on Saturday.

“In those pressure situations I kind of like to take my mind as if I’m there at Bears, down at my local just doing my training, going through my process, and then I look up and I’m at Cbus,” Brown said.

“Originally I was actually not going to go for the field goal in that set, because I didn’t think we’d got enough metres, so I was on the right side of the ruck and I was actually going to kick down to the right corner.

"Then Jess (Elliston) took a really good carry, probably got an extra seven or eight metres, so I thought I was in range and flipped around and as soon as it came off the boot – I think Simaima Taufa brought a bit of pressure, but I got it over her – I saw it was on line and that it had the distance, it was great.”

The match-winning play only solidified Brown’s status as the woman for the clutch moment, just over a year on from her field goal heroics for Queensland in Game Two of the 2024 Origin series.

The Titans will be looking to bottle up the elation of the last-round win, in which they also celebrated Shaylee Bent’s 50th game on her birthday, and combine it with some improvements in attack to shake up the finals race, full of belief they can go all the way.

“I think obviously after that game it’s a super positive feeling, we made it very hard for ourselves in that game, so we’ll have a lot to review and a lot to work on," she said.

"But we really treated this as our first week of finals and that’s how we looked at it, moving on to week two now and anything can happen in finals, so we’ll do what we can and leave it all out there and give it our best.

“We just can’t afford to give away silly penalties, especially when we’ve built some really good pressure, and just letting teams out of their own half really, that will be a big focus, just our discipline and getting our defence on forcing them to kick out of their own half.

“I think start of the game we did have a fair bit of possession down there (on the Raiders line) and the main thing we wanted to do was keep patient, tire them out.

"Early on in the game, gaps might not open up as they should, it’s just a matter of staying patient.”

Part of the reason for Brown’s confidence that it's all coming together at the right end of the year is the versatile young talent who have performed instantly to help the Titans reach the post-season.

The club has brought on nine debutants this year, with players such as Phoenix-Raine Hippi and Takoda Thompson, who filled in on the right edge next to Brown after Jasmine Solia suffered a shoulder injury against the Raiders, fitting into all kinds of roles when needed.

The Titans are hopeful Georgia Grey will be available to return from concussion for the trip to Newcastle to bolster their outside back stocks and be part of a charge to the first weekend of October.