Broncos Roster, Signings and Rumours Discussion 2026

Wolfie said:
We have lost better players before, and we will always lose better players at some point. You dont have to replace a Payne Haas with another Payne Haas, you just need to make sure you bring in players that do their job effectively. Good teams get their succession planning right and thats why they stay at the top level for so long.
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While I agree with your point that we’ve lost big names before and life went on - who have we lost that was better than Haas?
 
R360 paying such big money for Haas doesn't make sense to me. He is not overly marketable, and will have a much harder time making the transition than someone in the backline. Players like Papi, Walsh, Cleary etc make far more sense to me from a marketing stand point, and I also think they are more likely to do well in the game.

I can't blame Haas for taking that kind of money, andhe has always seemed to be pretty motivated by money so it isn't that surprising. I said when we won the comp we would likely lose Haas. He says he's about legacy, but he's not. He got his premiership and now he will chase the coin.
 
theshed said:
While I agree with your point that we’ve lost big names before and life went on - who have we lost that was better than Haas?
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I'd argue Karmichael Hunt was more impactful when we lost him. He was the QLD & Australian Fullback and was always being prepared to replace Lockyer at 6 and likely as captain. Losing him, followed by lockyer retiring a couple of years later ruined the club.

I still believe if Karmichael Hunt never left, he would have been one of the all time greats, and we likely would have won a comp or two between 2010 and 2015 when we next made the GF. He had more to his game than Slater.
 
theshed said:
While I agree with your point that we’ve lost big names before and life went on - who have we lost that was better than Haas?
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Its a decent size list of players but its always going to be subjective depending on if you like a player or not. CONEHEAD, Thorn, Lockyer, Alfie, Webcke, Petero, Lazarus etc the list could go on. Payne could potentially be better, but he may not as well.

This current era of NRL suits Payne to a tee. He's an incredible athlete who can churn out big stints and make plenty of meters. At the same time though, i dont see him matching the physicality that somebody like Webcke did week in week out over his career, which you needed when he was playing. Always going to be hard to compare blokes from different era's where the game isnt really the same.
 
Wolfie said:
Its a decent size list of players but its always going to be subjective depending on if you like a player or not. CONEHEAD, Thorn, Lockyer, Alfie, Webcke, Petero, Lazarus etc the list could go on. Payne could potentially be better, but he may not as well.

This current era of NRL suits Payne to a tee. He's an incredible athlete who can churn out big stints and make plenty of meters. At the same time though, i dont see him matching the physicality that somebody like Webcke did week in week out over his career, which you needed when he was playing. Always going to be hard to compare blokes from different era's where the game isnt really the same.
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You mean the players we lost before going on a 20 year dry spell?
 
Morepudding said:
I'd argue Karmichael Hunt was more impactful when we lost him. He was the QLD & Australian Fullback and was always being prepared to replace Lockyer at 6 and likely as captain. Losing him, followed by lockyer retiring a couple of years later ruined the club.

I still believe if Karmichael Hunt never left, he would have been one of the all time greats, and we likely would have won a comp or two between 2010 and 2015 when we next made the GF. He had more to his game than Slater.
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Agreed. Hunt left at the worst possible time
 
The issue with Payne leaving for the massive $$$ at R360 is it doesn't necessarily add up. First it's $3m a season sure, but for what, 2 seasons? So that's $6m guaranteed, and I use that word loosely because there really isn't any guarantee the comp will last long enough to get the full amount.

Then you factor in he can get $1.3m from us for the next 6 years easy, so that's $7.8m plus any 3rd parties and post career earnings.

Yes, IF R360 is a massive success, and IF Payne is good enough at it that he remains worth $3m a year to them, and IF he gets more than 2 years out of them.......then he will earn more money there than with the Broncos. But there's plenty of risk with it. There's absolutely no guarantee he earns more with R360 than he does with the NRL.

So leaving for the money honestly doesn't make sense.
 
theshed said:
You mean the players we lost before going on a 20 year dry spell?
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I get what you are saying, but our dry spell wasnt simply down to us losing the odd good player. We lost our Legendary coach and replaced him with blokes who were inept and the whole structure just didnt work. All clubs lose top level players and still have success and challenge, Storm are a very good example of this, but we didnt, and that was our big failing.
 
john1420 said:
The issue with Payne leaving for the massive $$$ at R360 is it doesn't necessarily add up. First it's $3m a season sure, but for what, 2 seasons? So that's $6m guaranteed, and I use that word loosely because there really isn't any guarantee the comp will last long enough to get the full amount.

Then you factor in he can get $1.3m from us for the next 6 years easy, so that's $7.8m plus any 3rd parties and post career earnings.

Yes, IF R360 is a massive success, and IF Payne is good enough at it that he remains worth $3m a year to them, and IF he gets more than 2 years out of them.......then he will earn more money there than with the Broncos. But there's plenty of risk with it. There's absolutely no guarantee he earns more with R360 than he does with the NRL.

So leaving for the money honestly doesn't make sense.
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The thing though for Payne is if he looks a quality player in Union, he will open the door to big money elsewhere that he will never get in League. If R360 somehow succeeds, then he is pretty much guaranteed to keep earning big money. For me, if he takes this offer he is backing his ability to kick on in a different code.
 
theshed said:
I’d prefer he not take it. Firstly it will be a massive unneeded distraction an d secondly he’ll be coaching against many of his own players.

Though it would be tempting for him to beat Kev lol
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I wouldnt be a fan of him taking this appointment. He could genuinely build something special here, last thing we need is him getting distracted.
 
Morepudding said:
I'd argue Karmichael Hunt was more impactful when we lost him. He was the QLD & Australian Fullback and was always being prepared to replace Lockyer at 6 and likely as captain. Losing him, followed by lockyer retiring a couple of years later ruined the club.

I still believe if Karmichael Hunt never left, he would have been one of the all time greats, and we likely would have won a comp or two between 2010 and 2015 when we next made the GF. He had more to his game than Slater.
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People forget hunt was 4 years younger than slater and he was keeping slater out of the fb spot for aus and qld until the final year, where it was still a toss of the coin scenario, and hunt was still in the teams.

What a waste. **** the afl for that gimmick. Why is it 99% of the time broncos players that union and afl want. I get we are the most popular team but ffs, how many converts did they get in western sydney for folau? Lol i'll tell you ZERO. Having lived down there at the time, it was terrible marketing for them, every time afl was brought up it was "ex nrl player..." but no one could (and still cant) name a single giants player.
 
john1420 said:
The issue with Payne leaving for the massive $$$ at R360 is it doesn't necessarily add up. First it's $3m a season sure, but for what, 2 seasons? So that's $6m guaranteed, and I use that word loosely because there really isn't any guarantee the comp will last long enough to get the full amount.

Then you factor in he can get $1.3m from us for the next 6 years easy, so that's $7.8m plus any 3rd parties and post career earnings.

Yes, IF R360 is a massive success, and IF Payne is good enough at it that he remains worth $3m a year to them, and IF he gets more than 2 years out of them.......then he will earn more money there than with the Broncos. But there's plenty of risk with it. There's absolutely no guarantee he earns more with R360 than he does with the NRL.

So leaving for the money honestly doesn't make sense.
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I would imagine Payne's plan with R360 was very short term to make the cash and then come back to NRL.

The R360 tournaments are pretty short (the first couple anyway) and they don't have a centralised location, so he could just FIFO to the locations to play.

His issue now is the threat of 10yr bans... they sound like they can be overturned in court, but does Payne want to be the one that pays the lawyers to go to court.
 
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