The Brisbane Broncos have not endured a more damning and desolate season among the 32 they have seen. Nor has the club that was long the standard-bearer for sporting organisation success, the premier free agent destination and the game’s gold-tinted powerbroker been left in such a desperate and parlous state.
John Steinbeck wrote in The Winter Of Our Discontent that “men don’t get knocked out … what kills them is erosion. They get nudged into failure. It’s slow. It rots out your guts”. It perfectly sums up why a team that not so long ago were the most feared in the league managed to get bundled out of the premiership by a record-breaking 58-0 defeat that surely ranks among the most guileless, dispassionate and unprofessional playoff performances that any team has put up in a September showdown.
Sunday’s humiliation was just the high watermark for Brisbane’s lacklustre season. It was the culmination of a front office power-play that has left the club at its lowest ebb. The damage, the uncertainty, the humiliation … it has all been self-inflicted over the last two years.
It was only four short seasons ago that Brisbane were less than a minute from premiership glory. The club had managed to bring coach Wayne Bennett back to the fold. He had, it seemed, returned the club to the mountaintop in his first season back at the helm. The team had a roster full of internationals and boasted the seven-times premiership winning coach who was singularly the most important figure in the history of the club.
Four years on and the club is reflecting on the worst finals loss in the 112 seasons of premiership rugby league. More than a handful of senior players spent the night before the match playing poker machines at a Sydney hotel, many of them among Brisbane’s worst less than 18 hours later.
The captain has been so poor this year he was pilloried by all except his coach. He, along with the man who was Queensland’s hooker just a year ago, have been told to look for other clubs. The team’s highest paid player is reportedly on his final chance.
The spine of the club is in such a poor state it ranks close to the worst in the premiership. The backline is underperforming with few pieces to build around. The young pack – touted as the envy of all clubs pre-season when Brisbane started among the favourites for the title – has been wildly inconsistent and highly undisciplined. Star players were cut or allowed to leave mid-season.
Coach Anthony Seibold is locked down to a five-year deal. He has not made a difficult job any easier with his at-times alarming media displays, the latest a post-game press conference where he didn’t appear to take any personal responsibility for the humiliating finals exit.
CEO Paul White announced on Monday that a review would be undertaken and was forced to issue a statement a day later defending the professionalism of players.
This whole mess did not happen overnight, though. It was an erosion of culture, a corrosion of professionalism and a deterioration of a team-first ethos that has rotted the gut of the Broncos.
And it all started with a decision that, at its very heart, was based on the premise that Bennett was no longer the right coach. Bennett has won seven titles. He coached England to the last World Cup final. He is the coach of the Team of the Century and has won more games than any man in premiership history. There has been no more influential or important Bronco, a man who not only understands the true character of the club but one that personifies it.
There are two sides to every yarn and there are two very different versions of what happened in the corridors of power at the club. There seems little dispute though that there was a falling out and that front office powerbrokers took the opportunity to force out Bennett over fears about the influence he wielded. There was a concerted push to sign Seibold, he of less than a single season of head coaching experience.
It was pure opportunism. It was not done in the interests of the club and was disrespectful to a coach who was not living on legacy but on recent results.
There is little doubt that Bennett must take some responsibility for the roster construction. There were concerns with the spine in 2018. It is the job of a coach to coach though. He must develop players. He must make hard calls. He must bring a collection of individuals together. He must set standards. Bennett is renowned for all four. He is a development coach. He has never shied from the hard call – he even cut Wally Lewis. He is known for persisting with players who have off-field issues. He treated players like adults and he generally got a team ready to perform on game day.
It is hard to give Seibold a pass – the man the Broncos were willing to tear the club apart over – on any of the above criteria. He certainly didn’t make the hard call required on Darius Boyd. As a collective the Broncos have gone backwards. Only Payne Haas and Kotoni Staggs have unquestionably improved. The standards of professionalism were there for anyone at Harpoon Harry’s to see on Saturday night.
“It is so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it never shone,” Steinbeck wrote. Following Bennett is the hardest job in rugby league. Nobody has succeeded, and it is not looking like Seibold will bust that streak.
It must be remembered though that it wasn’t Bennett who extinguished the light. It was the Broncos. They accelerated his departure. They wanted him gone. They made their bed. And now, they are having a most restless night of sleep.
