The Broncos are targeting another premiership by 2025 as Brisbane bosses lifted the lid on the “fear” and “distrust” that triggered a cultural revolution at Red Hill under new coach Kevin Walters.

As Brisbane prepare for Friday week’s season opener against South Sydney, The Courier-Mail probed the cultural overhaul taking place, speaking to club powerbrokers about their plan to reprise the glory days at the Broncos.

The Broncos are bracing for one of the most critical seasons in the club’s 34-year history.

The glamour club must rise from the worst two seasons in their living memory – a wooden-spoon finish under former coach Anthony Seibold in 2020, followed by a 14th-placing last year as Walters, in his rookie campaign as an NRL mentor, attempted to mop up the mess and stabilise the ailing Broncos.

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Now, after some internal bloodletting and the arrival of CEO Dave Donaghy and Ben Ikin midway through last season, the Broncos believe they are building the front office to break Brisbane’s 16-year premiership drought.

“All the board cares about is two points and finals,” Broncos chairman Karl Morris says.

“The Broncos should perform a lot better than we have over the last 15 years or so.

“It’s all about winning.”

GRAND AMBITIONS

Ikin knows all about winning.

His bespectacled appearance and intellectual mind paints the Broncos football boss as an owlish professor, but the suit he wore nightly as one of the code’s most respected media commentators on Fox Sports masks a footballing resume that commands respect.

Ikin and Walters were Brisbane’s scrumbase brains in their 2000 premiership win. In 1995, at age 18 years and 83 days, Ikin became the youngest player in history to play State of Origin for Queensland. The Maroons’ Neville Nobodies won that series 3-0.

So Ikin knows success because he lived it.

It has been 255 days since Ikin dropped a bombshell, quitting his prestigious gig at Fox Sports to accept the job as Brisbane’s head of football. Time enough for Ikin to identify where the Broncos are placed, what they need to improve, and where they are going.

Asked when the Broncos can realistically challenge for the premiership again, Ikin is straight to the point.

“Inside of the next three years – that’s the goal,” he says.

“Our goal is to play finals football this year and then you want to keep advancing the cause, every season.

“The view is if we are a finals team this year, then your next goal is to get to contender status, which in this competition is making the top four.

“The great clubs have proven that once you get back to contender status, it’s possible to stay there every year if you are doing the right things right.”

CULTURE CLUB

Legendary rugby league coach Jack Gibson famously opined that winning starts in the front office.

The problem is that Brisbane’s front-office was a mess.

When Walters stepped into the coaching hot seat in November 2020, he was bereft of a full-time CEO. Donaghy’s arrival at Red Hill, after a legal stoush with his former club the Storm, was another six months away. Ikin didn’t walk into Brisbane’s opulent $27 million training facility until late June.

Behind the scenes, Broncos players were riven with insecurity.

The Seibold tenure and the club’s crash to the wooden spoon broke spirits, game plans, and trust in the Broncos system.

Amid the turbulence, some of the club’s best young talents, headlined by back-rower David Fifita and whiz-kid Reece Walsh, quit to join other clubs.

Ikin and Donaghy sat down with Walters. It was time to deliver stability and certainty in a Broncos football program that had spun out of control.

“The Broncos are a huge brand and when you look at the narrative ... fall from grace, constant scrutiny, it had a compounding effect,” Ikin says.

“Suddenly people became gun shy, insecure and it leads to uncertainty and fear and fear undermines trust.

“All the things you don’t want from an elite sporting organisation ended up being the way of things at the Broncos.

“The board had to address it.

“Sure, there were people who made poor choices and bad decisions, which has been well documented, but eventually the club led by the board said enough is enough.

“We arrived at this point where we don’t want to be. The discussion was, ‘How do we chart our way out of it?’ and that’s what we have been working on for the past 12 to 18 months.”

THE SACKINGS

Donaghy’s tenure at the Storm gave him an insight into the slick workings of a premiership organisation. Upon his arrival at Red Hill, Donaghy initiated swift change.

Seven weeks into his new role, Donaghy terminated head-of-football Peter Nolan, who was replaced by Ikin, and conditioning chief Andrew Croll, who made way for high-performance boss David Ballard.

Donaghy called in Walters and told the Broncos coach he would enjoy beefed-up resources to get the club firing again. Brisbane’s annual report shows the club spent an extra $1.5 million in the past financial year on Walters’ football program.

“I didn’t want to have any preconceived views when I went in. I wanted to go in with a fresh set of eyes,” Donaghy says.

“There was a lot of really great people there who were very passionate about the club.

“But given the challenges over the prior 18 months, there was a need to bring the club together, and also the fanbase.

“We had to really focus on that connection and work collectively to set a course forward.

“Change is always hard, it doesn’t matter what it is or who it is. We were 3-12 (after 15 rounds of the 2021 season) and nobody was happy with being there.

“I’d been there for about two months and we decided to head in a different direction in a few areas.

“We needed a reset. There were some tough calls made and some new faces that came in and provided a different energy and voice.

“It was pleasing we were able to see some growth and positivity off the back of it. We want to continue that into this year.”

THE BOARD

Brisbane’s board was also put under the microscope. The executive arm had been pilloried for their decision to rubberstamp a club record five-year, $3 million contract for Walters’ predecessor Seibold. The contract was ripped up after just 21 months. The payout for Seibold was a disastrous $1.5 million, a financial black eye compounded by the Covid crisis which had gripped the NRL.

Chairman Morris wanted fresh blood on the board. In December, Andrew Fraser and David Asplin were added as popular long-serving member Tony Joseph departed.

There have been calls for the entire board to be sacked and Morris does not shy away from the Broncos’ high-level administrative failures.

“If you look at us as an organisation the year before, we didn’t handle Covid well at all. We’ve had three CEOS and coaches in the last three years,” Morris said.

“Sometimes you’ve got to hit the bottom to realise the changes you have to make.

“The club’s in a terrific spot now with people who know what their jobs are and doing them very well.

“Kevvie’s got a lot of good people around him that are helping him with his position.

“He’s had some major changes in terms of players that suit his style of play.

“We’re on a strong footing for the year ahead. The tail end of last season started to show what the Broncos can really do.

“We have gone through a very rough trot, which very few clubs don’t go through, but a lot of the building blocks are there now.

“The board was very happy with the back end of the year.”

THE COACH

Walters himself has detected the choppy waters at Red Hill are starting to ease.

He remembers the helter-skelter first few months following his arrival. Without Donaghy and Ikin, Walters found himself crunching salary-cap numbers and immersing himself in player-contract negotiations.

When boom back-rower Brendan Piakura was about to walk out on the club to join Canterbury on a $1.2 million deal last March, Walters had to intervene, taking the teenager on a tour of Suncorp Stadium to spruik the Broncos dream.

It was all too much. Walters was feeling the heat. It affected his communication at training and his tactical and emotional investment in the playing group.

By July, after a 46-0 flogging against Souths, Walters gave the players time off and decided it was time for a reset. Indeed, a reset for himself.

When the squad returned, the Broncos won four of their last nine games, including a rousing 35-22 victory over top-eight side Newcastle to finish the season.

Walters wanted total transparency with his players. To know he had their backs.

Under his predecessor Seibold, a former senior player had told the fallen coach: “You say the door is open, but to us it doesn’t feel that way.”

Ahead of his second season as head coach, Walters feels he is better prepared for leading Brisbane back to the glory days.

“I’ve learnt to be myself,” says Walters, the 241-game club legend who won five premierships at the Broncos.

“At times there last season, I went away from the person I am. I need to stay on track and stay the course and be myself. When I do that, everything else falls into place.

“I learnt it’s important I maintain my character win, lose or draw, that’s important for the players.

“The one great quality about Wayne Bennett (Broncos foundation coach) is he has always stayed the same with his character.

“Every time I think of the Broncos, it’s more than just finals football. It’s a winning culture. Just making finals at this club is not enough, mate. It needs to be more than that.”

THE SHIFT

Ikin is the first to admit the Broncos are not delusional. They can still identify the gaps in their system and the aim is to plug them as quickly as possible in the march to premiership credibility. But Ikin has detected some winds of change at Red Hill that can sweep them to the playoffs this season.

“I have seen a shift in mood,” he says.

“Culture isn’t something that gets created overnight. Let me be clear – we are nowhere near where we want to be and none of us in the footy program are the finished product.

“The stress applied on the organisation and the poor results on the field drove a few people to retreat.

“By the time I arrived, I found this real willingness among the people who were still there to get the club back to where we know it can get to. That’s a good start.

“I see a head coach and a playing group who are getting better connected.

“It’s still going to be a lumpy journey, it won’t happen in a straight line, but once you get everybody understanding that we have got a plan and they know their role in that and you are energised about coming to work, then that’s a great place to start from.”

Walters, off-contract at season’s end, will not be satisfied until he delivers the success he enjoyed as a player.

“We have a history of winning premierships,” he says.

“That’s my opinion and what I was a part of in our premiership years at the Broncos.

“It would be a good start to make the finals this year but we need to convert that into winning another premiership for the club.

“The group here now and the coaching staff and high-performance staff have to work together to create our own piece of history. What happened 30 years ago is not really relevant anymore. It doesn’t mean anything to the current squad.

“These guys have to put their own stamp on the place and forge their own legacy at the Broncos.”