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It’s silly season. We’ve gone through the finals, the World Cup and the November 1 deadline after which, NRL players who are out of contract for 2024 can discuss terms with other clubs. With that in mind, we’re launching Smart Signings, our new series on who NRL clubs should be targeting to address their biggest weaknesses, using the players that are actually available to them.
Brisbane were 2022’s nearly men. They improved markedly on their previous years, but collapsed in a heap late on to miss the finals entirely after being in contention for the top four.
Sat in the press conference room at Kogarah after their loss to the Dragons in the last game of the season, coach Kevin Walters was both devastated to have finished outside the 8, but also proud of the steps taken forward.
Now, with the addition of Reece Walsh at fullback – a clear upgrade on Tesi Niu and Te Maire Martin – plus the arrival of Jock Madden as halfback depth and an extra year into the legs of standout youngsters Selwyn Cobbo and Ezra Mam, the expectations at Red Hill are set to be even higher. Missing the 8 in 2023 isn’t an option.
The jury is still somewhat out on Kevvie the coach, despite a decade and over a hundred games of first grade. His Catalans team were far from stellar, he broke even with Queensland over four Origin series and, at Brisbane, he has been tasked with rebuilding from their worst season ever.
His emphasis throughout last year was their defence, and to that end, brought in Kurt Capewell and Adam Reynolds to help sure things up. He mentioned it in basically every press conference as the area that they needed to improve most.
I went through how effective Reynolds is defensively in a Broncos deep dive last year, but the short answer is that his kicking helped them end sets better, which jumped the play up the field and further from their goal. They needed it, because the ability to stop opposition packs still lags just about every other aspect of their game.
For their part, Brisbane also improved massively in terms of metre production, and notably, where the metres were coming from.
They were – obvious exception of Penrith aside – perhaps the best at getting metres from their back line, with a highly-effective transitional game that saw both wingers, Selwyn Cobbo and Corey Oates, plus centres Herbie Farnworth and Kotoni Staggs, able to generate go-forward early in sets.
Backline metres are important because they don’t waver across a game: if you make all your metres in the forwards, then you need a big strong bench to help out because forwards can’t play for 80 minutes. Do it in the backline and you’re onto a winner, in that style of play at least, for the whole duration.
Brisbane would often do superbly on yardage plays, then meander in good ball, then rely on Reynolds to kick them out of trouble or to generate attack. When Mam came into the team he offered a point of difference, too, and finally solved their big five eighth problem.
Hooker remains a weak point, but for the most part, teams can only have two or three of the four spine players at an elite level given the salary cap, and the Bronx have gone all in on Reynolds and Walsh. They also have Blaze Mozer, one of the best young hookers around, waiting in the wings and likely to debut.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
The Broncos also benefitted from a lot of positive variance. Granted, they did that by putting themselves in a position to win by keeping games close, but the breaks that they got are unlikely to be replicable across the season and, indeed, weren’t.
If you read our Monday Power Rankings column, you wouldn’t have been surprised to see Brisbane lose more frequently late in the season, because the cold hard wind of variance always returns to the mean.
I wrote a “Are the Broncos good or lucky?” column after round 2 and, as the season went on, it was increasingly clear that the latter was more important than the former.
Early in the year, they defeated Souths thanks to an intercept and a field goal from a backrower, won at Newcastle after some of the dodgiest bunker work of the year, got to play Trent Barrett’s Bulldogs twice and went down 24-4 to the Titans and still won. Oh, and they had their permanent advantage of getting to play Magic Round at home.
Their metres for/against was almost exactly the same as the Titans, and had they had the luck that Justin Holbrook’s men had, they could have been in the same situation down the bottom.
If they weren’t good, where were they bad? Brisbane’s major issue last year was off the ball. This isn’t a surprise, as it was largely their issue in previous years too.
Their defensive record was strange, statistically speaking at least, and backs up the wider point above regarding positive variance: they were third worst in the league for metres conceded, suggesting that they really struggled to contain opposition packs, but that didn’t manifest into points against or line breaks against.
In layman’s terms, that means that other teams failed to exploit field position that they were able to accrue. That could be that Brisbane were very good at last-ditch defending and scrambling, but given that the Broncos were among the worst for missed tackles and dead last for ineffective tackles I would think that it isn’t the case.
It would behove Kevvie to pay attention to the underlying numbers on this one, because the footy gods giveth and they taketh away. The Broncos got better, but they also got a lot luckier.
So why was that happening? Brisbane have, unequivocally, one of the best starting packs in the comp, with all five having made rep squads in 2022. Beyond that, however, they drop off a cliff.
I mentioned this issue in relation to Parramatta in a previous Smart Signings, but it is even worse at the Broncos, who habitually fail to maintain intensity across 80 minutes, fail to make contact stick and thus haemorrhage metres.
It’s doubly surprising because they are one of the best at creating metres from the backline, taking that weight from the forwards, which should empower their middles to keep the linespeed high in defence.
The signal in here might be the minutes: Payne Haas plays over an hour a game in the front row, with nobody able to replace his contribution from the bench.
Brisbane never nailed down who they wanted to pick up the slack: Thomas Flegler managed to dovetail well enough, but Ryan James, Corey Jensen and TC Robati all had a crack at the second bench rotation option without making it stick.
Needless to say, the drop off from Haas to either of those three is vast. It’s glib to say that they need a second Payne Haas – who wouldn’t? – but they do need someone who can let him have a breather without it squashing all momentum.
What they need is a fill-in Haas, someone who can match his physicality without the need to do it for 62 minutes per game, which would help the team to keep going when their star isn’t on the field, and perhaps, just perhaps, actually allow Kevvie to give his main man fewer minutes.
I was surprised as anyone to see James Tamou fall out of the stats on this one, and in a lot of ways, it’s annoying for the Broncos that he was available but chose instead to go to the Cowboys. His tackles per minute is right up there with anyone in the NRL.
Jaimin Jolliffe, too, excels in short doses, with 22 tackles off just 36 minutes of action, with plenty of other upside. He’d be a clear upgrade on Ryan James, were the Titans interested in a swap with one of the many fringe, underperforming Broncos interchange forwards.
Fletcher Baker ended the year in NSW Cup after the arrival of Matt Lodge and the emergence of Terrell May at the Roosters, but is far too good for that level. He’d fill the gap perfectly.
Also in that bracket is Penrith prop Lindsay Smith, who averaged 23 tackles in 40 minutes per game in his limited NRL gametime last year. He’s in the Panthers top 30, but nowhere near regular first grade footy. Get on the phone, Ben Ikin.
If 2022 was the story of moving the game farther from their own line, then Brisbane certainly succeeded in that, but largely via their ability to progress themselves and then kick better through Reynolds.
The story of 2023 will be about whether they can continue that upwards trajectory – and fixing their defence remains the central pillar of it.