For the most part, it has been an easy call. This year, however, it has become more difficult by the day. And this week, well my patience may have finally run out.
The Broncos were already a basket-case, but it is hard to imagine a more tumultuous few days in the club’s history, even allowing for the way they have teetered through 2020.
In the space of a few days, club legend Allan Langer was sent into quarantine after attending his own birthday bash, they were battered by South Sydney at ANZ Stadium and coach Anthony Seibold was forced to stay in Sydney to attend to a family matter, leaving him facing a fortnight in quarantine.
Remarkably, it didn’t end there. On Sunday morning, it emerged that Tevita Pangai Junior — a player who was accused of shopping himself to other clubs only last week — thought it would be a good idea to attend the opening of a barber shop that apparently had links to a bikie gang.
You can’t make this stuff up. The Broncos were already in crisis. I’m not sure even that does justice to their current position, surely the lowest ebb in the club’s 32-year history.
No one could blame chair Karl Morris for rethinking his decision to take the job, although he remains committed to the cause. Chief executive Paul White has spent a decade building a reputation as one of the game’s best administrators. He is scrambling to leave the club with that reputation intact.
As for Seibold, there are clearly far bigger matters at play. He has a family to think of and they must take priority at a time like this.
I was a supporter of Brisbane’s decision to appoint Seibold. I backed Morris and White and it damaged my relationship with Wayne Bennett. I still believe Seibold is a good coach, that opinion fuelled by the amount of people I respect who tell me he is an intelligent and savvy operator.
Yet it clearly isn’t working and for Seibold’s benefit as much as the Broncos, I could understand if Brisbane powerbrokers make the decision to move him on at the end of the season. Perhaps sooner.
They may have no choice. Barely a day goes by without rumours of player unrest. Their performances on the field reflect an unhappy camp. Anyone and everyone will tell you the dressing room is rife with cliques and the rebuild would now appear a job years rather than weeks in the making.
A generational group of young players are learning how to lose rather than win. The scars could take years to heal. They are emerging at a time when the club’s culture looks rotten to the core.
Even allowing for that, the Broncos have been inundated with applications for the chief executive position. No doubt, the same would occur if they went to market for a coach.
There is still something magical about the club, their attraction as strong as ever because those on the outside can see the potential in the playing group and the strength of their brand, which remains the most powerful and affluent in the game.
But they seem miles off winning a premiership again — a wooden spoon may arrive before than — and most supporters would just take a win before the end of the season. They may need to wait. It is hard to believe the Broncos can beat Canberra in the nation’s capital this weekend given the respective form line of the two sides.
I was at Brisbane’s first game at Lang Park in 1988, when Wally Lewis played like a Colossus and they beat the premiers Manly. The years since have been adorned with premierships and wins aplenty. They have been a tipster’s best friend. Loyalty has brought its rewards.
But even loyalty has its limits.
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For as long as I can remember, I have religiously tipped the Brisbane Broncos. It has been a weekly decision born out of blind loyalty to a club I have supported for more than 30 years.