‘Savage’: Kevin Walters’ face-off with Brisbane staff after club review ultimately led to his demise as coach

Kevin Walters once famously declared he wanted to be “carried out of the Broncos in a box”. Instead, it was a behind-the-scenes showdown with staff that ended the club legend’s time at the club.

It was the powder keg moment that effectively ended Kevin Walters’ coaching career at the Broncos.

This masthead can reveal the explosive behind-the-scenes showdown between Walters and Brisbane employees following a savage club review that ultimately triggered his demise.

In mid-September last year, Walters’ Broncos flogged the Warriors to qualify for the 2023 grand final.

Precisely 12 months on, Walters was incredibly under siege, summoned to Broncos headquarters in the wake of a club-wide review that dissected Brisbane’s slide from grand finalists to 12th-placed also-rans this season.

Walters arrived and was joined in a room by his football staff, high-performance unit and other Broncos employees, including the club’s welfare officer.

The group were greeted by Broncos chief executive Dave Donaghy and Michael Collins, the former New Zealand rugby executive and now Bond University sports chief, who presided over the review as an independent party.

Kevin Walters’ end-of-year review with people like club CEO Dave Donaghy was “horrendous”. Picture: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images

The contents of the review was described by one well-placed source as “horrendous”.

Collins began outlining some of the feedback to Walters and his team. Anonymous assessments, including opinions from Brisbane players, were relayed to the Broncos coach.

The critiques were withering. The feedback covered a range of topics.

Question marks were raised over the declining standards and leadership of Brisbane’s football department. Walters was attacked for his communication style, inconsistency of message and lack of organisation.

One staff member would spend hours cutting up vision each week with a view to it being used at the upcoming meeting of Broncos players to analyse the good and bad things they did in the previous game.

When the footage ended up on the cutting-room floor, not being reviewed each week, the staffer felt it was a futile exercise. Weekly preparation began to suffer.

Upon handing over the findings to Walters, Collins and Donaghy left the room.

Staff have rarely seen Walters angry. Picture: Liam Kidston

Rattled by a damning review, Walters went apoplectic.

Perhaps feeling a sense of betrayal, he delivered a savage spray to members of his department, questioning if they were truly behind him in his quest to break Brisbane’s 19-year premiership drought.

Staff were reeling in a state of shock. They had rarely, if ever, seen Walters, usually amiable and a happy-go-lucky soul, in such a distressed state, exploding with rage.

Several members in the room, including a female, believed Walters’ conduct was unprofessional and they left the meeting fretful, with the coach’s shock outburst reaching the ears of Broncos management.

In that moment, Walters’ grasp on his dream job – coaching his beloved Broncos – was slipping toward an untenable finale.

Meetings with Brisbane’s top brass followed.

Walters, contracted to the end of 2026, firmly believed he could turn the club around and argued for a chance to right the wrongs of a horror 2024 campaign.

It was suggested to Walters that perhaps the pressure was consuming him; that one of the toughest jobs in Australian sport was becoming too much for him to handle.

Players were critical of Walter’ coaching style. Picture: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images

Proud to the end, Walters was determined to soldier on.

He could fix the mess, put the premiership jigsaw together.

The club legend, who once famously declared he wanted to be “carried out of the Broncos in a box”, had high hopes for next season and did not see the bullet coming, not even as recently as 48 hours ago.

By complete chance, this reporter walked into a Chinese restaurant for a meal with friends in the Brisbane suburb of Milton on Wednesday night.

Sitting two tables away was Walters with his new assistants, Ben Te’o and Trent Barrett.

The trio spent the evening laughing and were at times engaged in animated conversation that suggested Walters was passionately building a rapport with his right-hand men ahead of Brisbane’s 2025 revenge mission.

Upon leaving the restaurant, Walters was far from a broken man.

He approached our table warmly and shook hands with the group. He joked if I had my tape recorder hiding and began a mock search under the desk, triggering a chorus of laughter.

Walters will always be a club icon. Picture: Gregg Porteous

This was not the behaviour of a man who had any fears about losing his job.

By 12pm on Thursday, I called Walters to organise an interview to discuss Brisbane’s 2024 campaign and his plans to turn the club around.

Walters happily obliged and suggested a coffee catch-up next week.

Again, no sign Walters was a dead-man walking … until six hours later, when he was summoned to a 6pm meeting to be advised he had coached his last game for the Broncos.

It is hard to believe that just 12 months ago, Walters was three minutes away from winning a Broncos premiership.

The 56-year-old was agonisingly close to being the Kingmaker who brought the NRL trophy back to Brisbane – just as he did as the Broncos’ star five-eighth alongside Allan Langer for the first time in 1992.

As he farewelled Te’o and Barrett on Wednesday night, Walters could not have envisaged their Chinese meal to plot a premiership fightback would represent his Last Supper at the Broncos.

Originally published as ‘Savage’: Kevin Walters’ face-off with Brisbane staff after club review ultimately led to his demise as coach