It appears the Brisbane Broncos have effectively bungled the rebuilding of their club in the wake of Darren Lockyer’s retirement through the signing of Scott Prince.
The first six months of life without Lockyer for the Broncos was great.
They had a youthful roster deep in talent and importantly the 1-6-7-9 combination of Josh Hoffman, Corey Norman, Peter Wallace and Andrew McCullough were showing plenty of promise.
Then as young teams tend to do they lost their way toward the end of the season but at least the ability was still there and you could envisage that nucleus potentially winning a premiership in the next five years.
For the last five seasons, the Broncos were potentially denied a premiership by either a Lockyer injury or an Ashton Sims dropped ball, which signifies the importance of Lockyer’s leadership and creativity.
It appeared Norman was on a path of doing a good job of replacing this until some internal instability seemed to set in late last year.
The decision to sign Prince to replace Norman in the halves was a confusing one for a rebuilding team that lacked potency in attack.
Wallace is a reliable halfback but can struggle to create line breaks and tries for his side.
Teaming him with an ageing Prince, who also spearheaded one the worst attacking sides in the NRL for the past few years, was always going to render you with the bluntest halves combination in the NRL.
They only justifiable explanation for the Prince signing is that he can be a useful promotional tool that can sell tickets and that it was a temporary solution before winning the Jonathon Thurston and Cooper Cronk sweepstakes which is fine, but they lost.
Beyond that it had the short term risk of limiting opportunities and development for the young talent coming through.
The ramifications of the Prince signing could not have turned out worse for the Broncos, there best long term prospect for a five-eighth has justifiably fled to Parramatta, which amazingly offers more hope for his career.
Tonight’s opposition, local rivals Gold Coast Titans, are free of Prince, have a young dynamic halves combination and are the strongest they have ever looked.
Another strange reason for letting Norman go appeared to be to give them the salary cap flexibility to sign the brilliant but troubled Josh Dugan which also would have jeopardised the career of Hoffman at the Broncos.
Unsurprisingly this plan backfired, but maybe for the best this time.
If the Broncos are going to be a premiership threat in the next five years, they are going to have to find a future half prodigy in the under-20s comp once Prince leaves at the end of next season.
Otherwise it is going to be a long decade for the former superpower.
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