Ten Gold Coast Titans will feature in this weekend's XXXX Rivalry Round clash in the Hostplus Cup when affiliates Tweed and Burleigh lock horns on Saturday.
Dubbed as one of the biggest events in the local rugby league calendar, the duo will meet for the 37th time in Hostplus Cup history, with neither team taking bragging rights into the contest after the duo finished their previous encounter having to split the points after 80 minutes.
The only advantage between the pair is Tweed's four point win when the pair met in 2021 at the home of the Seagulls.
They'll boast six players who regularly call Parkwood home, with Jaylan De Groot, Treymain Spry, Tom Weaver, Toby Sexton, Klese Haas and Sam McIntyre all named for the Seagulls.
On the other side of the fence, Keano Kini has been named despite battling a bump to his hip. Should he play, he'll be joined by Tony Francis, Jacob Alick and Josiah Pahulu who all form part of the undefeated Burleigh Bears, fresh from a classy 36-10 outing against last season's beaten grand finalists at home.
Kick-off is at 3.15pm (AEST) on Saturday at Piggabeen Sports Complex.
Match: Seagulls v Bears
Round 4 -
home Team
Seagulls
9th Position
away Team
Bears
3rd Position
Venue: Piggabeen Sports Complex, Tweed Heads
QRL.com.au's Rikki-Lee Arnold takes a deep dive into this weekend's fixture:
Tweed Seagulls v Burleigh Bears
Head-to-head: Burleigh 20 | Tweed 15 | Drawn 2
Last meeting: Tweed 26 drew Burleigh 26 in Round 17, 2022
- Tweed have two wins and a draw from the last four clashes between these two rivals
- The last two meetings between these teams at Piggabeen resulted in a four-point win to Tweed and a draw
- Tweed have three wins and a draw from their last four home games while Burleigh have three losses and a draw from their last five away games
- Sami Saiuluma has surpassed Nick Shaw to become fifth highest Cup scorer for Burleigh on 63 tries
A word from the coaches
Tweed Seagulls coach Dave Penna: Last week for us, I thought Toby (Sexton) and Tom (Weaver) both had great games. Their kicking game was great, and they led the team around really well. But we are still trying to focus on not putting ourselves under pressure at times in the second half. It’s something we just have to keep working on.
Burleigh Bears coach Luke Burt: It was a good solid performance by us last week against Redcliffe. There's a bit of improvement still left in us but the mentality and the way we went about getting the win, keeping them scoreless for 60 minutes, was good. I want to see a similar performance to last Sunday this weekend, but with those improvement areas, like playing for the 80 minutes and tidying up our shape. We don't want to go backwards, but move forward and keep improving. We know there's never an easy Rivalry Round against Tweed. We've had draws and narrow losses... They've had the upper hand recently so it's going to be a tight match - physical and probably with a bit of emotion in it. We're expecting a really tough match.
