Dragons fans have been raptures about Sami's displays since he inked a $1.25 million deal over three years from 2027. The 28-year-old try whiz will line up on the wing at Kogarah Oval on Sunday, aiming to sink the last-placed team he is set to join.
The move was ratified in April and Sami, who has not missed a game in 2026, has been on fire with 11 tries, 10 line breaks and a career-best 214m per game.
Sami moved due to the lucrative nature of his Dragons deal, which has been called "The Godfather" offer the Titans could not match.
"First and foremost I have loved coaching Phil and in an ideal world we would have kept him," Gold Coast coach Josh Hannay said.
"But there is this thing called a salary cap and he got a deal that was too good to refuse from the Dragons.
"We send him there with our blessing. He has been fantastic this year. I can't speak highly enough of what he has done."
Sami is a laid back character which can sometimes be misconstrued as a lack of desire. He is in fact a wonderful competitor and a consistent performer with 82 tries in 159 games for the Titans, just three behind the club's all-time leading try-scorer Anthony Don.
"As a new coach I heard many different stories about Phil Sami in a very broad spectrum," Hannay said.
"I said from day one, 'I am going to make my own judgement' and all he has shown me is that he is a guy that cares, puts the team first and works really hard. We want him to finish the year well here. The Dragons have got a cracking guy and a cracking player."
Hannay said Sami was "high energy" and would be up and about for the Red V showdown and for the rest of his games at Gold Coast.
The 16th-placed Titans beat Manly 38-32 last week and while Hannay wasn't happy with the defensive performance, there was a lot of the display he said he was "really proud of", particularly the fight and skill to come back from a 10-0 deficit.
The coach will take an ugly win over a pretty loss any day and it is back-to-back victories for the first time this year that the club are chasing.
"I think how you build ultimate confidence is to win regularly," Hannay said.
"The last couple of months we'd have a really good win, and often the next week, it wasn't like we had fallen off a cliff, but we hadn't been able to get that win again.
"Racking up wins builds bullet-proof confidence and that is what we are striving for. We want to turn one win into many."
