2024 pre-season discussion: Pre-season Premiers

[Mum-the-meatloaf]

The biggest issue with the backline was Jack Reed on the wing. Reed was not a popular figure on the forum and fans were not happy to see the compromise - they wanted young Kahu on the wing.

Interestingly, I don't remember too many members pushing for Oates on the wing. Huge was the most vocal member and time proved him right.

Copley was actually relatively popular at the time. He was in career best form and many thought he had found his position in the centres. I still recall making the point that a Copley highlights reel would look more impressive than a Reed, only for Freaky to blow my spot.

Yeah, fans were not happy about having Hoffman in the spine, especially when he started posing with Bulldogs players at the World Cup when he was still contracted with the club. In hindsight, fans should have been happy to let him go. Still, Hoffman didn't last long at fullback and they eventually relented to Hodges who in an ideal world, would have been the fullback post Hunt, but his body couldn't handle it.

Barba also sticks out. He really struggled at the Broncos and had it been anyone else he would have been public enemy #1. However, 2012 bought him a lot of patience and I think 2016 ultimately redeemed that patience, and called into question the Boyd vs. Barba argument that was prevalent at the time.

Ten years, it certainly flies by.

Jack Reed was one of my favourite players for a while there. Purely because he was no frills, solid 7/10 nearly every game.

He just did his job.

 

[Big Del]

Jack Reed was one of my favourite players for a while there. Purely because he was no frills, solid 7/10 nearly every game.

He just did his job.

Jack Reed`s offloads were a thing of beauty .
The wingers on his side scored plenty of tries from Jack`s passes .

 

[Swordfish]

Jack Reed`s offloads were a thing of beauty .
The wingers on his side scored plenty of tries from Jack`s passes .

Yup, Oatesy was a big beneficiary of those offloads.

 

[thenry]

Yeah Reed was great for us.. except for getting burnt twice in succession by Fergo in the 2015 prelim, which in turn caused no one to trust him in the final play of regular time against Morgan.

 

[thenry]

Forced myself to watch the GF again for some reason.

Talk about highs and lows. I hope Walsh has learnt from that miss in covering Cleary. Switched off for less than a second. Game / Season over.

 

[LittleDavey]

Forced myself to watch the GF again for some reason.

Talk about highs and lows. I hope Walsh has learnt from that miss in covering Cleary. Switched off for less than a second. Game / Season over.

To be fair, it was a cracking game. The boys were doing well to keep it close at half time, they looked thoroughly overawed and were not playing like they had been. Penrith would have put 20+ on any other team in the comp the way they were playing - not a single fucking error until what, 60mins in?

The lads came out after half time with the fire in the belly and settled a bit and put the foot down like we KNOW they can. A few of us have been saying here since about halfway through last year that this team has a gear that no other team in the competition can match...and we saw it writ large in the GF, Ezra ripped that edge to fucking shreds, and it was glorious.

Unfortunately after that I think they got a little comfortable and complacent and thought they had done enough...coupled with the fatigue from the first half defending, and the 40-knot wind in our face, and Penrith had enough experience to snatch a win from the jaws of defeat.

I really hope that is the thing that turns the light bulb on and we become fully ruthless this year. We showed it in the finals last year, we need to continue that. No mercy, to any other team, ever. The game isn't over until the final whistle and these boys have learnt that the hard way. I thought as a club we had put that to bed post-2015...to lose a second GF in similar circumstances is rough. I don't expect it to happen again in the next decade.

 

[Finbar]

I avoided BHQ after the GF so this may have already been spoken about plenty, but I found it interesting at the time. It was an article from The Age about their being a electronic dance music festival being held next door to the hotel the Broncs were staying at on the eve of the GF.

The Broncos were unable to sleep because of the noise and also festival-goers coming back drunk and noisy to the hotel and even banging on the doors. Someone even died at the festival so there were police and ambulance on the scene.

Staff let the players sleep in on Sunday to try and make up for lost sleep, but I just think about how massively someone stuffed up to have let this happen and how big of an impact it had on our game. In a GF against Penrith, you can't be kept up the night before from a music festival. Our first half and final 20 minutes look like a team that didn't sleep.

I would struggle to manage a day in the office after a rough sleep like that, imagine having to play a GF against Penrith.

Did A Music Festival Lose The Broncos A Grand Final? | theMusic.com.au | Australian music news, gig guide, music reviews

The team were put up in a hotel just steps away from a bustling EDM festival, which drew in more than 50,000 punters.

themusic.com.au

 

[Santa]

I really hope that is the thing that turns the light bulb on and we become fully ruthless this year. We showed it in the finals last year, we need to continue that. No mercy, to any other team, ever. The game isn't over until the final whistle and these boys have learnt that the hard way. I thought as a club we had put that to bed post-2015...to lose a second GF in similar circumstances is rough. I don't expect it to happen again in the next decade.

Sounds like we may have learnt that lesson.

‘Do we have to be in the room?’: Broncos stars’ brutal rewatch of ‘sh*thouse’ grand final loss

‘Do we have to be in the room?’: Broncos stars forced into brutal rewatch of GF loss

www.foxsports.com.au

 

[winslow_wong]

Yeah Reed was great for us.. except for getting burnt twice in succession by Fergo in the 2015 prelim, which in turn caused no one to trust him in the final play of regular time against Morgan.

I remember feeling sad seeing him retire only a year later. That feeling of life goes on.

 

[LittleDavey]

I avoided BHQ after the GF so this may have already been spoken about plenty, but I found it interesting at the time. It was an article from The Age about their being a electronic dance music festival being held next door to the hotel the Broncs were staying at on the eve of the GF.

The Broncos were unable to sleep because of the noise and also festival-goers coming back drunk and noisy to the hotel and even banging on the doors. Someone even died at the festival so there were police and ambulance on the scene.

Staff let the players sleep in on Sunday to try and make up for lost sleep, but I just think about how massively someone stuffed up to have let this happen and how big of an impact it had on our game. In a GF against Penrith, you can't be kept up the night before from a music festival. Our first half and final 20 minutes look like a team that didn't sleep.

I would struggle to manage a day in the office after a rough sleep like that, imagine having to play a GF against Penrith.

Did A Music Festival Lose The Broncos A Grand Final? | theMusic.com.au | Australian music news, gig guide, music reviews

The team were put up in a hotel just steps away from a bustling EDM festival, which drew in more than 50,000 punters.

themusic.com.au

I hadn't heard about this at all. Very interesting, given the way the game panned out you would have to assume it played its part. Along with the build up to the week etc.

 

[Mightybroncs2k17]

Looking back at last years finals series i think we played our grand final in week one agaisnt the Storm. There was so much hype around our record against them and all and we came out and played nearly the perfect game.

Against the warriors i thought we were sloppy, yeh we scored some points but high error rate and made some silly plays. Just lucky the gap between us and the next best team was pretty big or we could have been in trouble on prelim final day.

Then the big dance i maintain we played very poor. Got bashed through the middle early on, made continuous errors coming out of trouble, showed very little patience. We had that red hot 20 minute period which made us look good but apart from that, i wouldn't rank that performance up there with some of our better ones through the year.

If we played as good in the grand final as we did in week of the finals i think we beat Penrith.

 

[john1420]

My God, if that was "poor" I'm speechless.

 

[Mustafur]

Looking back at last years finals series i think we played our grand final in week one agaisnt the Storm. There was so much hype around our record against them and all and we came out and played nearly the perfect game.

Against the warriors i thought we were sloppy, yeh we scored some points but high error rate and made some silly plays. Just lucky the gap between us and the next best team was pretty big or we could have been in trouble on prelim final day.

Then the big dance i maintain we played very poor. Got bashed through the middle early on, made continuous errors coming out of trouble, showed very little patience. We had that red hot 20 minute period which made us look good but apart from that, i wouldn't rank that performance up there with some of our better ones through the year.

If we played as good in the grand final as we did in week of the finals i think we beat Penrith.

It's hard to say where we could have improved more outside the ability to hold the ball more than Penrith, we where dominated in normal play basically all game, something we never really experienced with other teams mostly all year, Penrith are definitely a different beast to the rest of the comp.

Our attack was much sharper than Penrith's though which relies more on beating the other team to submission before putting the points on, they did most of that work in the first half to what got us in the back end of the second.

 

[Broncos Maestro]

Jack Reed`s offloads were a thing of beauty .
The wingers on his side scored plenty of tries from Jack`s passes .

Copley certainly should have benefited but it was wasted on him. There’s a reason why he got the nickname ’Dropley’!

 

[BroncosFever]

It's not a big dance, nobody is dancing with anyone.

This is not the AFL.

Stop calling it a "big dance", ffs.

 

[Sproj]

I can't wait for our redemption this year in the big dance and then going to England and taking the other big dance Penrith haven't been able to achieve.

 

[GCBRONCO]

Copley certainly should have benefited but it was wasted on him. There’s a reason why he got the nickname ’Dropley’!

Am I mistaken or like some other former Bronco players were his best games against us? You know what I mean, coasts along the season for the opposition but along comes his former club and pulls a big effort out of his ass, then back to cruise mode.

 

[thenry]

It's hard to say where we could have improved more outside the ability to hold the ball more than Penrith, we where dominated in normal play basically all game, something we never really experienced with other teams mostly all year, Penrith are definitely a different beast to the rest of the comp.

Our attack was much sharper than Penrith's though which relies more on beating the other team to submission before putting the points on, they did most of that work in the first half to what got us in the back end of the second.

Yeah completion rate in the first half was ridiculously bad for us. Add to that Penrith making 1 error in 80 minutes and it was a perfect storm.

Our shit-hot attack meant we were lucky to be in front at any stage tbh.