NRL 2020: How Brisbane Broncos could benefit from wooden spoon
Let’s be honest! Since the club last won the premiership in 2006, the Broncos have been mired in mediocrity, never doing enough to win a premiership but just doing enough to stave off the stinging rebukes which come with abject failure.
Opinion
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Sometimes in sport it’s better to be atrocious than average.
It’s why Broncos fans should not shed a solitary tear over their season from hell which will get worse before it gets better.
As harrowing as it has been, this is the blowout the Broncos had to have.
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Sometimes you need to bounce off the bottom of the barrel to become desperate enough to inhale the bitter smelling salts that drive you to a brighter world.
Let’s be honest about it.
Since the club last won the premiership in 2006 they have been mired in mediocrity, never doing enough to win a premiership but just doing enough to stave off the stinging rebukes which come with abject failure.
The well-worn route for their young players is to play a few good games, get branded the new Allan Langer or Shane Webcke and land an upgraded long-term contract as they guide the team into that magnificently mediocre sixth position which is just enough to be a safe shelter from withering criticism.
Then the grand piano falls from the heavens as the club learns two difficult facts — their boy wonders are not that good nor that hungry.
A fifth or sixth-placed finish would have looked solid enough on paper for the Broncos this year but it would have done nothing more than kept the club floating along in the comfortable world of the low pass mark.
Now, with the entire operation catching fire before their chastened eyes, the club has been forced to have an extensive look at their whole operation.
When the focus turns to recruiting, they could do well to listen to an interview with Brisbane Lions general manager of football David Noble on RadioTAB on Friday.
Noble explained how the Lions looked at the person as much as the player when recruiting and asked themselves not simply how the player would settle into Queensland life but whether his partner and children would be happy in Brisbane.
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Their due diligence can start years ahead. Recruiting is never a perfect science but there is no doubt many of the Broncos’ recent signings like Issac Luke, Ben Te’o and James Segeyaro had that snatch-and-grab feel to them.
The Broncos players have become conditioned to a sense of entitlement.
One of the criticisms about Tevita Pangai Jr and playmaker Anthony Milford is the club wanted them at various stages to lose weight and were disappointed when they didn’t.
Are they serious? Milford is on $1 million a year. Fitness should be an absolute given, not a special priority.
Any half with a pass, a kick and a step gets compared to Langer, but the reality is the club has seen no one like him and with natural playmakers becoming thinner on the ground as children play with phones rather than footballs, the truth is there may never be another Alf.
The worst rap on the Broncos came from behind closed doors during the week when Pangai Jr was interviewed by the NRL’s integrity department.
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It has been reported that Pangai Jr said he knew he was breaching COVID protocols last Saturday when he visited a bikie barber shop but he thought the Broncos were such a basket case he was beyond caring.
If true, these are staggering remarks. Rugby league has been full of stories about reckless footballers who went out, got carried away and lost their way and ended up in trouble. But stories like Pangai Jr‘s — where his faith in his club was so low he basically just gave up on them — are rare.
The Broncos were right to punt him. If he does not want to be there then let him go and slam the door behind him.
His dismissal is the first step towards the rebuild but it also shows that team morale has reached a level lower than anything seen in the club’s history, an issue which stretches well beyond Pangai Jr’s problems.