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Every week I wait for Brisbane to break out of their funk and still they don’t. Their decline is extraordinary and while they still have the tools they seem to have lost all idea of how to use them.
What has happened to the Broncos who made last year’s grand final and were so good in the early part of this season? And what can master coach Wayne Bennett do about it?
They look to have lost all confidence. They seem lethargic. Key players aren’t giving the team anything like what they were providing in the early rounds. They don’t appear to have that belief in their own ability that has always been a trademark of great Brisbane sides.
Bennett can point out all the things they are doing wrong and try to fix that at training, but that is mechanical. What he needs to do most is make the players think like winners again.
Brisbane did have a win last week, but it was against South Sydney. The Rabbitohs haven’t won for a while and are not even a shadow of the team that took out the premiership in 2014.
In the other three of their four most recent games they have lost 40-14 away to Canterbury, 48-6 at home to Melbourne and, on Friday night, 31-12 at home to Penrith.
I tipped the Broncos to win the premiership before the competition began, but I want to get off now.
I think they’ve dropped so far off the pace and have so many players well off their best form that whatever improvements they might be able to make between now and the end of the season won’t be enough.
Some of the Brisbane players appeared to stop after Penrith’s Waqa Blake got the ball off a Broncos bomb just off his own line. It was almost like they were resigned to things going wrong for them.
Before enough of the Brisbane players could regroup, Blake had managed to run into a gap. He went all the way to score a try.
That was not late in the game, with the result in Penrith’s favour already assured. It was the first try of the match.
The top three sides on the ladder – Cronulla, Melbourne and North Queensland – have this competition between them now.
The Sharks and Storm are runaways in first and second place respectively on the ladder. The Cowboys are third, one point ahead of fourth-placed Canberra, two ahead of fifth-placed Canterbury and four ahead of sixth-placed Brisbane.
Just a couple of times this season, North Queensland have looked like a fraction of their normal intensity has been missing, like they might have the tiniest of hangovers from having won last year’s premiership.
But when they are at their brilliant best, like they were in smashing the Bulldogs 36-0 at home on Thursday night, they look every bit capable of making it back-to-back titles.
Cronulla’s 36-4 canter over hapless Newcastle on Sunday was their 15th win in a row. History beckons for a club that is trying to win its first premiership in its 50th year in the competition.
Melbourne are machine-like in their efficiency and the Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk show was a nine out of 10 against Sydney Roosters on Saturday night. The Roosters kept trying, but once the Storm had established command there was only one direction in which this game was heading.
Brisbane have lost five of their last seven games and in only one of those losses did they have to play in the round immediately before a State of Origin game, without their representative stars.
Sure, the Origin period has still been difficult for them, but it has been for a few other teams as well and they seem to have handled it better.
Bennett and his players are under enormous pressure to get the Broncos back on track, but they are so far off course at the moment they need a map.
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