Broncos most influential figures in club history: 12-7
AS PART of the Brisbane Broncos 30th anniversary, our writers weigh in on the 30 most influential figures in the club’s history. Paul Malone counts down from 12-7.
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AS THE Brisbane Broncos celebrate their 30-year anniversary, The Courier-Mail has compiled a list of the 30 most influential figures in the club’s history. Paul Malone continues the countdown today as we move towards revealing the top six tomorrow.
Broncos most influential figures in club history: 18-13
Broncos most influential figures in club history: 24-19
Broncos most influential figures in club history: 30-25
12. LACHLAN MURDOCH
MURDOCH lived in Brisbane from 1993-95 when he was general manager of Queensland Newspapers, which was a sponsor of the Broncos, before becoming deputy CEO of News Limited in Australia.
Broncos bosses had strong relationships within News prior to his move to Brisbane, but the son of News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch became a key figure in the early negotiations with players.
Some players who signed with Super League, including Gorden Tallis and Ian Roberts, became friends and several Broncos were dinner guests.
In 2014, Wayne Bennett’s return as Broncos coach gained decisive momentum when Bennett rang Murdoch about wanting to come “home’’.
Murdoch is now executive co-chairman of News Corp and 21st Century Fox.
11. BERNARD POWER
BRONCOS consortium member Paul Morgan had been in the process of issuing shares in a new brewery, Power Brewing, and suggested to company principal Bernard Power that the Broncos would be a good way to promote the Yatala brewery in 1988.
“Bernard announced the sponsorship of a $1 million a year for three years, and our club became not only the first private company of big-time sport in Australia, but by far the receiver of the greatest ever sponsorship in the nation,’’ the late Gary Balkin noted in a blog before his passing this year.
Most remarkably, as Bennett and Balkin have noted, Power made that guarantee to a football team which had not played a game.
10. CYRIL CONNELL
IF the Broncos head scout had recruited just Darren Lockyer from Roma, it would have been enough.
But 14 of the 17-man Brisbane 2006 premiership side were Broncos scholarship players signed up by Connell, a Kangaroos halfback in the mid-1950s.
Connell died in 2009 aged 81, but five players in Brisbane’s starting side in the 2015 grand final were spotted by Connell — Darius Boyd, Ben Hunt, Andrew McCullough, Sam Thaiday and Corey Parker.
It’s doubtful the Broncos will ever have a more gentlemanly and kind man ever go through their doors than the former schoolteacher, who had a network of country tippers who just loved doing something to help him.
“They don’t make them like Cyril anymore. He had a special eye for talent,’’ Bennett said.
9. DARREN LOCKYER
LOCKYER played a club record 355 first grade grades and is their most recent premiership captain.
He remains influential as a club director and committee member for player recruitment, as well as a pundit for The Courier-Mail and Channel 9.
His record of 59 Tests for Australia will go unchallenged for many years.
“What Locky typified more than anything else was how to be a Bronco,’’ Kevin Walters said.
“He would do everything he could to win and he was taught that in the era he came through. When he got an opportunity to be a genuine leader, he kept doing it and it catapulted him into a great career.’’
Wally Lewis looks back that it was a “huge bonus’’ for Lockyer, a five-eighth, to learn at first grade level at fullback, eventually winning Dally M positional awards in both spots.
“The biggest problem in the early days was where they were going to play him because they were set for playmakers (in 1995),’’ Lewis said.
“He could sit back at an early age and learn and play his own game.’’
It remains an under-appreciated part of Lockyer’s story that in his last game for the club he kicked a field goal to win a semi-final in extra time despite a broken cheekbone, which forced him to miss the preliminary final the following week.
8. WALLY LEWIS
MANY will be aghast that “the King’’ would be eighth on any list.
Lewis and his mid-1980s Wynnum-Manly sidekick Gene Miles were signed to the first two Broncos contracts and the early months of the 1988 season produced some of Lewis’s best performances, even by his standards.
He scored two tries in the debut win over Manly, which created a winning aura and standard for the Broncos from their first 80 minutes.
But Bennett’s dissatisfaction with aspects of Lewis’s leadership in 1989 and complaints from some players, club insiders said, led to his loss of the captaincy in one of Queensland sport’s biggest controversies.
He left after an injury-hit 1990, with 46 first grade games as a Bronco, to play his career out with Gold Coast Seagulls.
“We all worshipped Wally for what he did as a footballer — and he was always a good team man,’’ Mark Hohn said.
“We had a lot of fun together. You just liked to be in the same side as him.’’
7. JOHN RIBOT
A TRAINED electrician, Ribot was a QRL staffer when his guest speaking role at a Bullets basketball lunch impressed on the Broncos directors his capacity to be a communicator for them with a grasp of modern sports administration.
Ribot was CEO for the first seven years of the club.
Having come through hard-school ranks as a player for Newtown and Wests in Sydney, Ribot was a strong enough character to withstand the tensions of league politics.
He coined the phrase “the evolution of frustration’’ for the series of arguments the club had with the NSWRL/ARL, which culminated in the Super League war.
“The players did buy into the us against them argument,’’ Shane Webcke said.
“It was effective in as much as I think it was real then, maybe not so much now. They (the NRL) couldn’t afford to do anything to the Broncos now.
“People use war analogies when they shouldn’t because it brings people together in a common cause. That’s why they do it.’’
Ribot was skilful at keeping players at his price in days before the Super League war, selling players on the idea of a pie which needed to be shared equitably.
Eventually, the NSWRL rejected the valuation of a Wendell Sailor contract in 1994 and the wheels grinding towards Super League accelerated.
“I remember going into meetings with the club knowing what another club would offer me and walking out happy to have agreed to stay at the Broncos for less than I thought I’d get,’’ Webcke said.
“Why it worked so well is that some things are worth more than money, which sounds a crazy statement in today’s world. But you get opportunities in life in later years for having shown yourself a loyal person. They love having you as part of their organisation.’’
After two Broncos premierships, Ribot went on to, if anything, improve on the Broncos blueprint when he helped set up the Melbourne Storm as foundation chairman in 1998.
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