2019 Midseason Report Card

[Broncapz]

Season Grade : F
Best Win of the season: Rd 10 - Roosters
Worst Loss of the season : Rd 13 - Titans
Favourite Player of 2019 : Turpin. Looks like he's a computer programmer, but plays like a gladiator.
2019 Prediction : 10th
Overall Thoughts :
Backline has fallen apart and is unreliable, but feels like something big is growing.


Copy and paste and go to town with your own report card.

 

[I bleed Maroon]

Season Grade : E
Best Win of the season: Rd 2 - Cowboys
Worst Loss of the season : Rd 13 - Titans
Favourite Player of 2019 : Haas. Looks like a mega star in the making. A genetic and physical freak of a human. Turpin a close second. Nobody has ever created more uncertainty around McC's place in the side, and for that alone he has my respect.
Overall Thoughts :
It's been a shocking year, there's no question about that. It began with a coach and a team that weren't on the same page which reflected in their on field performances, requiring the coach to begin a clean out and subsequent rebuild process that put us at the bottom of the ladder where we more or less haven't budged, and now that garbage start has been compounded mid season by an injury crisis in key positions.

That and now we begin to hear murmurs that the club are struggling to be cap compliant.....with a squad whose average age is, at its highest in the mid 20's. That is just unacceptable to be honest but we really don't know enough about what is going on behind closed doors to be judgmental. And of course salt into the wound, Boyd and McC cling on to the club like stubborn ticks, sucking the blood out and replacing it with poison that infects the players around them. Either they're incredibly ignorant, or they are fully aware they're both past it/not up to standard and just don't give a shit.

The only reason I am giving an E and not an F is because there does seem to be more upside coming out of this fucked year than downside. The painful part is getting to that promised land without going mad.

 

[Scorchie]

Season Grade : D

Best Win of the season: TPJ Show v Cowboys

Worst Loss of the season : R14, Eels

Favourite Player of 2019 : Turpin

2019 Prediction : 8th

Overall Thoughts : Gave them a D as it’s not Titans style diabolical. We have blooded new kids which is great, but I have never been so angry at a side at the same time. They will scrape into the 8 because anything else is unacceptable but will bomb out in Week 1

 

[Rico]

Season Grade : D
Best Win of the season: Rd 10 - Roosters. Haven’t seen the supporters enjoy a win like that in years
Worst Loss of the season : The tight losses to the tigers and dragons seemed to shit me the most with our shambolic efforts to get a point. I can’t help thinking these home losses will hurt us by August.
Favourite Player of 2019 : Alex Glenn. All effort, physical and reliable. Great body language and rises when challenged for his spot unlike others.
2019 Prediction : 8th I have some confidence with the amount of home / QLD games we have for the run home. I think we’ve turned the corner in the last few weeks.
Overall Thoughts :
Spot on the table is unacceptable, no two ways about it. Would love to know the extent of our cap issues. I think we were in a real bind which has had a massive effect on the shape of the squad. The sick bastard in me is half enjoying the pain with rusted on supporters staying the course. I still support the new coach and change that was needed in the organisation and enjoying the transparency from the head coach.
Green shoots a plenty namely Haas, dearden and Flegler.

 

[Super Freak]

Best Win of the season: Rd 10 - Roosters. Haven’t seen the supporters enjoy a win like that in years

Speaking of that, I was at the game and people were literally running up and down the aisles to hug each other and other fans when we had the win guaranteed.

 

[Big Pete]

Season Grade: D-

Best Win Of The Season: Round 16 vs. Cronulla - When we look back on this season, this is the game that's going to stand out. They didn't showcase any impressive structures, were caught out defensively on a few occassions, but the effort on display was inspiring. It was the type of win an eventual premiership could be built off of.

Otherwise, Round 10 was their biggest scalp and Round 2 was the most impressive. My only agenda with Round 2 was the behaviour of some of the players. They acted like bullies and have been exposed ever since.

Worst Loss Of The Season: Round 13 vs. Gold Coast - Take your pick from Round 13-15, but this started the rot and the Broncos took an age to recover from it. From Gehamat's in-goal blunder from that embarrassing attempt at tackle from Boyd, the Broncos became sitting ducks that afternoon. Just another in a long line of embarrassing losses dating back to that Parramatta Eels game.

Favourite Player - Kotoni Staggs. That run he made against the Roosters in that game Brisbane played terribly will stick with me. He's got a lot to work on, but he's the club's future.

Ladder - I'll give you my full ladder, keep in mind there's plenty of recency bias.

Melbourne
Sydney
Canberra
Souths
Manly
Parramatta
North Queensland
Penrith
-------------------------
Newcastle
Cronulla
Brisbane
Wests
St. George
Warriors
Gold Coast
Canterbury

How I see their season going

W Canterbury
W Gold Coast
L Melbourne
L Cowboys
L Penrith
L Souths
W Parramatta
W Canterbury

Or some combination of four wins, four losses.

Very disappointing season and the signs aren't good that things are going to get any better in a hurry at the Broncos. It feels like 2010 all over again, except the senior players are worse and the young guns are even earlier into their careers. Seibold is going to have to pull off something remarkable between now and the end of the next season to remain at the club. If things somehow manage to get worse, I just can't see the board accepting it. Realistically, if this blows up in their face, a few of them should hand in their resignation considering the way they went about things.

 

[Morkel]

The Broncos don't deserve a report card. Friday detention for the rest of the year. Lucky not to be expelled.

 

[Aldo]

The Broncos don't deserve a report card. Friday detention for the rest of the year. Lucky not to be expelled.

Bring back the fucking cane I reckon.....

 

[broncsgoat]

Season Grade : F
Best Win of the season: Cowboys
Worst Loss of the season : Rd 13 - Titans
Favourite Player of 2019 : Haas - the sole shining light in a turd sandwich of a season
2019 Prediction : 12th
Overall Thoughts :
Going from being third favourites for the title pre-season to apparently needing to be completely rebuilt pretty much sums up the season. Some truly baffling decisions on player hiring and firing doesn't leave me with a lot confidence moving forward, not to mention the tawdry attempt to deflect the issues by claiming cap miss-management. Playing players out of position really just is the death knell for the club in 2019. Looking forward to 2020 as surely it cant be as fucked as this year.

 

[Locky’s Left Boot]

not to mention the tawdry attempt to deflect the issues by claiming cap miss-management.

You are entitled to your opinion like anyone else but I can’t see how we are deflecting issues by claiming cap mismanagement.

The fact is though, good salary cap management can be the difference between having a successful year of a bad year and plays a significant part. I have feared over the last 12 months we would find ourselves in a situation like the one where we are in.

It’s not hard to work out that when you are having to upgrade some of the most promising forwards in the clubs history to keep the vultures from swooping, throw in 3 highly paid club veterans who are not playing close to their current contract value (Boyd, Macca, Gillett) throw in a $700,000 marquee centre signing who we can’t keep on the field, a million dollar rocks and diamond half who is now being used to fill in for a job at 1 that our $700,000+ current fullback is incapable of doing, and you’d have to have your head buried in the sand if you didn’t think this was coming.

Whilst hindsight is a wonderful thing, if it wasn’t for injuries, there aren’t many on here who would disagree with the players we have let go so far to try and balance our salary cap moving forward. Wayne Bennett’s biggest strength is he is an effort coach and he can get players to play above their market value as well as get players to take less to play under him which is probably why we have not run into the problems salary cap wise we are facing now. We do not have Wayne anymore and as a fan base we have to accept that and build a new foundation and give the next regime a chance.

Seibold has done some good things this year as well as some bad and frustrating things but he has walked into a bit of a hornets nest. Just because Joey predicted us to win the comp doesn’t mean it’s gospel. Joey doesn’t know the ins and outs of the club and all he did was what most pundits do, make predictions based on paper with little to no after thought. It was also a prediction based on the dreaded p word ‘potential’

We have underachieved this year there is no arguing with that, but if you think for one second we would have been comfortably in top 4 at this point in time just by having Wayne still here, then your opinion is agenda driven. We were never going to be in the top echelon of teams with a spine of Boyd, Milford, Nikorima and McCullough, not to mention having to shed some players mid season with a view on the future. We got a lot of value out of guys like Lodge and TPJ whilst under Wayne, but now they are established big name players with big clubs circling so their contract value has probably more than doubled so that in itself poses salary cap issues moving forward. If Wayne was still here we would have this same problem now.

All things considered, as long as we show improvement in the run home or prove he is moving the club forward, Seibold at least deserves next year to prove if he is up to the job or not. He will have next to no excuses next season and will know what he has to work with and will have hopefully a full uninterrupted pre season.

By all means, slag Seibold off and criticise him when he gets it wrong, but drop the Wayne agenda and stop pretending everything would have been rosy this year under him. We may have a had a couple more wins under him based purely through effort performances if he was still here but that’s about it. We are all as disappointed as you are about under achieving this season so far as a whole but let’s keep everything in perspective. At least under Seibold we have shown a willingness for change and attempting to get rid of some deadwood.

 

[broncsgoat]

We have underachieved this year there is no arguing with that, but if you think for one second we would have been comfortably in top 4 at this point in time just by having Wayne still here, then your opinion is agenda driven. We were never going to be in the top echelon of teams with a spine of Boyd, Milford, Nikorima and McCullough, not to mention having to shed some players mid season with a view on the future. We got a lot of value out of guys like Lodge and TPJ whilst under Wayne, but now they are established big name players with big clubs circling so their contract value has probably more than doubled so that in itself poses salary cap issues moving forward. If Wayne we still would have this same problem now.

There's a lot in your post and I don't have time to respond to it all now but this part is what gives me the shits mainly about the whole season. I believe we would have been in this season up to our eyeballs had we maintained our trajectory from last year. We showed with that spine we could beat the best teams last year (apart from the storm) and we were all going to be a year older and wiser this year, add in Haas from round one and who fucking knows what we could have done.

With regards to the cap mismanagement they were using it as an excuse to shed players this year to get cap compliant, which is just complete and utter horse shit. It's just too convenient of an excuse.

 

[Locky’s Left Boot]

There's a lot in your post and I don't have time to respond to it all now but this part is what gives me the shits mainly about the whole season. I believe we would have been in this season up to our eyeballs had we maintained our trajectory from last year. We showed with that spine we could beat the best teams last year (apart from the storm) and we were all going to be a year older and wiser this year, add in Haas from round one and who fucking knows what we could have done.

With regards to the cap mismanagement they were using it as an excuse to shed players this year to get cap compliant, which is just complete and utter horse shit. It's just too convenient of an excuse.

Obviously that’s your opinion but I honestly don’t know how you came to that conclusion though when you consider how extremely poor Boyd and Macca have been for majority of the season which has had probably the biggest bearing on how stunted our attack looks. That has been our biggest problem this season along with probably the attitude and consistency of some of the younger guys week to week.

Unless you believe Boyd and Macca wouldn’t have digressed this poorly under Bennett than your argument would seem more valid. You could argue maybe Wayne would have got the younger guys playing with more effort consistently week to week but I still don’t think that would have put us on an upward trajectory for a shot at the title. The fact is our spine has been our biggest problem for years and most of our problems seem to stem from this. You throw a number 9 who has an all round game and a modern day fullback into this side and I guarantee you we would be probably be at least 8 positions higher. We are severely handicapping ourselves.

Finally, how is shedding players too convenient of an excuse though when we have had to already significantly upgrade TPJ and and Lodge for next season and beyond when they would have been on smallish contracts, not to mention we resigned Oates and no doubt trying to free up cap to also retain the likes of Fifita, Flegler, etc moving forward?

We have probably had to use over a million dollars just there to upgrade and keep some of that talent so of course there is going to be some movement the other way. It’s only a cop out if Seibold and the club come out and solely blame that on the club not making the finals if that eventuates which I’m yet to hear.

 

[Kooly87]

Season Grade : E - The only reason it avoids an outright F in my eyes is that we've bitten the bullet substantially on young players in order to improve our prospects for the coming years.

Best Win of the season: Rd 10 - Roosters, there's almost no contest here.

Worst Loss of the season : Rd 13 - Titans, but this is closer. The Round 14 Parramatta drubbing and the Round 8 Souths hidings were just gross as well. Losing on the buzzer to arguably much worse sides in the Dragons and Tigers is really quite inexcuseable too.

Favourite Player of 2019 : Hard to be more excited about anyone than Payne Haas. Big shout out to Turpin though. Alex Glenn is my pick for the most underrated contributor week to week.

2019 Prediction : 9th - I just cant shake the horrible feeling the Warriors will run 8th and beat us on F/A, its been that kind of year.

Overall Thoughts : A lot of changes that should probably have taken place 1-2 years earlier finally happened. Al the guys we've let go have arguably shown why they were let go. Only McGuire is really still playing at a high standard. Still a few more changes to go, but the ones that have taken place so far are arguably the only positive we can take out of the season at this point. It's the first time in a few years now I've been feeling positive about our next season, but the fact I'm already thinking about next season at this stage really says it all about how poor 2019 has been in terms of results.
[automerge]1563336459[/automerge]

There's a lot in your post and I don't have time to respond to it all now but this part is what gives me the shits mainly about the whole season. I believe we would have been in this season up to our eyeballs had we maintained our trajectory from last year. We showed with that spine we could beat the best teams last year (apart from the storm) and we were all going to be a year older and wiser this year, add in Haas from round one and who fucking knows what we could have done.

With regards to the cap mismanagement they were using it as an excuse to shed players this year to get cap compliant, which is just complete and utter horse shit. It's just too convenient of an excuse.

Our trajectory at the end of last year was a complete and utter hiding by a barely mid-table standard Dragons side in front of our home fans at a packed out Lang Park.

I know you can't always put our season down to just a single result, but I really don't think with a straight face that anyone could argue we were ever in the same ballpark as Melbourne, the Roosters or Souths, either last year or this year for that matter.

We had a few great results last year mixed with lots of poor ones against really much weaker sides. This year the only difference is we're losing to most of the good sides now as well.

We never had anything resembling a real threat last year and I dont think this year or next year will be any different.

 

[broncsgoat]

Our trajectory at the end of last year was a complete and utter hiding by a barely mid-table standard Dragons side in front of our home fans at a packed out Lang Park.

I know you can't always put our season down to just a single result, but I really don't think with a straight face that anyone could argue we were ever in the same ballpark as Melbourne, the Roosters or Souths, either last year or this year for that matter.

We had a few great results last year mixed with lots of poor ones against really much weaker sides. This year the only difference is we're losing to most of the good sides now as well.

We never had anything resembling a real threat last year and I dont think this year or next year will be any different.

Yes the finals match was horrendous. We started the season fairly poorly but went on a run to finish 15-9 with wins against the Roosters and Souths (whom we beat both twice last year) to finish the season. This all while milf was coming off surgery and having to learn a new role as our primary playmaker and kicker.

They hype was fucking real going into the finals game, everyone on this board were pumped at having a crack at the title due to our form leading up to the finals and I think the deflation we all felt after that result has jaded peoples perception of the season on the whole.

 

[Kooly87]

Yes the finals match was horrendous. We started the season fairly poorly but went on a run to finish 15-9 with wins against the Roosters and Souths (whom we beat both twice last year) to finish the season. This all while milf was coming off surgery and having to learn a new role as our primary playmaker and kicker.

They hype was fucking real going into the finals game, everyone on this board were pumped at having a crack at the title due to our form leading up to the finals and I think the deflation we all felt after that result has jaded peoples perception of the season on the whole.

If the hype was real for you then my hat's off to you, you're a far greater optimist than I am.

I never saw us as a challenger, not even close. The fact the Dragons embarressed us so badly really hurt, but honestly, even if we'd beaten them we would have just been fodder the following week for the genuine Top 4 quality sides last year.

 

[broncsgoat]

If the hype was real for you then my hat's off to you, you're a far greater optimist than I am.

I never saw us as a challenger, not even close. The fact the Dragons embarressed us so badly really hurt, but honestly, even if we'd beaten them we would have just been fodder the following week for the genuine Top 4 quality sides last year.

Please just understand that we beat 3 of the top 4 teams twice each last year - two of which were within a month of the finals game.

It's pure nonsense to say we would have been fodder.

The formline from last year suggested the dragons were going to be a bigger challenge to us because we didn't turn up for games we were expected to win.

 

[Kooly87]

Please just understand that we beat 3 of the top 4 teams twice each last year - two of which were within a month of the finals game.

It's pure nonsense to say we would have been fodder.

The formline from last year suggested the dragons were going to be a bigger challenge to us because we didn't turn up for games we were expected to win.

We've been something of a bogey side to the Roosters and Souths in recent years. So as long as we only played those two sides and absolutely, at all costs avoided Melbourne no matter what, then sure, maybe we could have been a title threat. Being a regular season bogey side is a long way off sustaining a genuine Finals campaign though.

Those sides were much better than us and in consecutive weeks, at least one of them would almost certainly have found us out as the pretenders we really were.

 

[broncsgoat]

We've been something of a bogey side to the Roosters and Souths in recent years. So as long as we only played those two sides and absolutely, at all costs avoided Melbourne no matter what, then sure, maybe we could have been a title threat. Being a regular season bogey side is a long way off sustaining a genuine Finals campaign though.

Those sides were much better than us and in consecutive weeks, at least one of them would almost certainly have found us out as the pretenders we really were.

Win 4 from 4 against those two sides. Must have been luck.