Titans coach Garth Brennan won't use a five-day turnaround as an excuse and centre Dale Copley wants his team to use it to their advantage.
Still nursing the physical and mental bruises of a third straight loss, the Titans bypassed a return home to the Gold Coast after Sunday's match against South Sydney, instead flying straight into Auckland on Monday ahead of Friday's meeting with the Warriors.
Joining them in New Zealand were injured halves Ash Taylor and Tyrone Roberts who flew in from the Gold Coast and will be named in the 21-man squad on Tuesday.
Brennan refused to declare either Taylor or Roberts a certain starter on Friday night but their presence will provide a boost to a squad searching for confidence.
The Warriors are themselves smarting from a heavy defeat at the hands of the Sea Eagles in Christchurch last Saturday and will host a Titans team desperate to be the first team in 2019 to win after such a five-day turnaround.
The Raiders (round two v Melbourne), Dragons (round two v Rabbitohs) and Eels (round three v Roosters) are the only teams to have endured five-day turnarounds so far this season and all three have failed to come away with the win.
It is rare for a team to contend with a five-day turnaround between successive away games but studies in the past have shown that any disadvantage may be less than it appears on the surface.
Everyone talks about short turnarounds but sometimes they can be a good thing
Titans centre Dale Copley
A Fairfax report published three years ago quoted former South Sydney strength and conditioning coach and University of Queensland associate lecturer Vincent Kelly saying that "days between matches isn't a major factor in determining a win or a loss," with a team's chances of winning dropping from 50 per cent to around 45 per cent.
He did acknowledge that travel was a major contributing factor to a team's chances of winning but Copley believes the chance to compete for two premiership points as quickly as possible is an opportunity that the Titans should embrace.
"It's funny. Everyone talks about short turnarounds but sometimes they can be a good thing," Copley said after his side's 28-20 loss to the Rabbitohs on Sunday night.
"You don't have time to worry about too much and there's not too much time on the training paddock. A light couple of runs and you're back on.
"At the end of the year we're not going to be worried what turnarounds we had, we've just got to win.
"It's plain and simple. It doesn’t get much more black and white than that.
"We could be playing tomorrow and we’d need to win."
Every try from Round 3
The first of two five-day turnarounds that the Titans will face in 2019, record-breaking winger Anthony Don is approaching Friday with a similar mindset to Copley.
Now the all-time Titans' leading try-scorer having crossed for his 68th NRL try against the Rabbitohs, Don believes the week together in Auckland will help to unite a playing group that showed character to fight back against one of the form teams of the competition.
"I'm really looking forward to the short turnaround actually. It means we can get over there, have one or two light training sessions and make amends for tonight," Don said post-game.
"We're really looking forward to playing in Auckland and we've got to come out firing.
"It's much better than having a long week where you've got a lot of time to think about your performance. We've got to learn from that game and then wipe it and get set for New Zealand.
"It's going to be a very short, compact week but it’s going to be good to get away for a week as a group in Auckland and hopefully get the win on Friday."
