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Opinion
There is no doubt the Brisbane Broncos are in complete disarray.
There are many opinions as to why, including that former players don’t have enough involvement, that there’s no team barbecue after the captain’s run and that the winning culture is gone.
I don’t subscribe to the winning culture theory. Teams can have good cultures and still lose. There are always other factors at play, things like injury lists, umpire decisions and sometimes just pure luck.
However, most large organisations have a set of values that are designed to lead to good culture, and the Broncos would be no different. Resilience would be key on this list for most organisations.
Anthony Seibold was right on the mark in the press conference on Friday night. Resilience is where the Broncos are falling down and is also the reason they need change at the top. Anthony Seibold will likely be the first domino to fall, but if the team is not playing to the club’s values, the problem is more deep-rooted than that.
Anthony Seibold. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
A lot of commentary around the Broncos centres on their error rate. However, this doesn’t tell the whole story. Sure, they rank fourth-worst in handling errors, but they also rank 11th-worst for missed tackles and seventh-worst for total errors. Not great rankings by any measure but certainly not catastrophic.
If you look at the handling errors, only the Bulldogs, Titans and Rabbits are worse. This seems to provide a possible explanation until you look at some of the numbers surrounding that. The Broncos have committed 99 handling errors across their ten games. The next three clubs on the list, all with fewer than a five-error gap to the Broncos, are the Roosters, Eels and Raiders.
Clubs like the Roosters, Eels and Raiders pride themselves on strong defensive work to cancel out the errors made. When they do lead to tries, these clubs do something about it. Trent Robinson was livid about the Roosters letting in four tries last Thursday night against the Raiders. You can bet the Roosters will be intense in the defensive work next weekend.
Whereas these clubs can generally defend against these errors, the Broncos cannot. They’ve had the most points scored against them of any team in the NRL this season. As per earlier in the article, it’s not missed tackles; it’s more a case of poor misreads in defence, lack of communication or, worse still, a lack of effort in the one-percenters such as cover defence.
While Brodie Croft made a bad miss on Luciano Leilua that lead to the ‘dropout’ try on Friday night, the fact that no-one appeared to know that the short dropout was on or got across in cover defence until it was too late is really inexcusable for a first-grade team.
It was the low point of the 48-0 loss to the Tigers and arguably the low point of the Broncos season, even taking into account the 59-0 loss to the Roosters earlier in the year.
Either the confidence levels are so low that the players are unwilling to make a mistake or the team camaraderie is simply not there.
Kotoni Staggs will be back from injury shortly and David Fifita is not too far away. You would imagine the return of two high-quality players will lead to an improvement in performance. However, these two won’t change the course of the Broncos season unless these cultural issues are sorted out.
When cultures fail in an organisation board members and senior management tend to be shown the door. For the Broncos, some senior players need to go when injuries abate. Seibold will likely go, but all of this could be in vain without change at the very top.
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