I remember the sack Bennett chorus was getting very loud by the time we bombed out of the 2005 comp - hell, I was part of it. It felt like it was all happening again too in 2006, but they showed signs of life in that game against Melbourne, and the rest is history.
2007 could have been a very different year if Locky didn't go down against the Cowboys. He had taken his game to another level on our run to the 2006 premiership and he was looking in similar touch that night again, but ACL injuries can be cruel and it felt like it took him another couple of years to regain his confidence to run the ball the way he used to.
As good as Lockyer was at the twilight of his career, that knee reconstruction spelled the end of him being a dominant force in the competition. The knee reconstruction hindered his game and took some of the edge out of the Broncos. The other big disaster that season was losing Petero Civoniceiva. Bulla was right up there with Steve Price and Roy Asotasi as one of the best front row forwards in the game and it's really taken them until now to find anybody of his calibre.
I find 2007 to be a strange year in general, especially now since Melbourne have had the premiership scrubbed from the record. So many teams struggled for consistensy through out the year and you had teams like the Cowboys wind up in 3rd place with a negative differential which is pretty extradinary.
Brisbane tried an experiment early on in the season and it backfired. I didn't actually mind the idea of having a spine of Hodges, Lockyer, K. Hunt and Berrigan but the two early losses prevented the Broncos for really settling on it and they went back to basics. That reset actually had a negative effect on the team, because they became predictible and the defence were able to frustrate them out of games. Every now and then they'd have too much class but they just couldn't find a rhythm.
The season turned around for them when their star players came back from representative football. When Queensland pulled off a typical come from behind victory in Game I, you could see it really brought the likes of Karmichael Hunt, Justin Hodges, Darren Lockyer etc. to their best and their mid-season form was incredibly scintellating.
Then they had the worst injury run in club history and they went from being a Top 4 side to barely making the 8. I'd like to think the players who filled in left it all on the field against Canberra and once Newcastle pulled off that amazing win against the Tigers they called it a season. The players who filled in played with tremendous character and it's a shame the Broncos weren't able to emulate that attitude early on in the season.
It's a shame because I had extremely high expectactions going into that season. The same team minus Webcke and C. McGuire with Greg Eastwood, Michael Ennis, Ben Hannant, Steve Michaels, Dave Taylor etc. in line for more opportunities. I didn't necessarily think they'd go back to back, especially not without a proper 7, but I thought they would have been pretty dominant.