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Brookie Bob -
silvertails.net[/st_td][/st_tr][st_tr][st_td="0.7"]
JOINED: .March 15, 2021
MESSAGES: 554
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For twenty years the Broncos did quite well out of a salary cap that was equal with the Sydney teams (and still is). Players would stay for less in Brisbane because: they had grown up there / their families were there, the aspirational nature of playing for the Broncos during that very successful time, and (importantly) the fact that it was much cheaper to have a great lifestyle north of the Tweed. Probably more so then than now. Club officials in Sydney were offering good Broncos players much bigger money to move back in the day and very few did.
Being a high-profile, successful player in very large RL-loving demographic in Brisbane must have had other rewards too. Sponsorships galore, people thinking that the sun shines out of all that you do. Translate your club success over to SOO and you're pretty much a RL idol in QLD. Unfortunately - it's had a downside.
Like Rome, the downfall has come from within. It seems that the granting of a Broncos jersey to some players in recent years may have given these same players the idea that they had 'made it' - and could do a lot of crap off the field, and not a lot of anything on it (and get paid overs to do so). As an outsider looking in, it looks like Kevvie was put in to put a best-practice culture back into the jersey again from the ground up, and it looks like that's going to take time.
I don't think he's in the top-shelf of tacticians, but his intent seems right.I'm sure the current crop of players probably have more personal accountability than the Broncos circa 2019-2020, 'case a lot of the players with mental baggage have gone.
My puzzle is - how did you guys let Ethan Bullemor go? Hard worker, great attitude, smart, fast (which can't be coached), loads of football potential. The salary cap at Red Hill must be way off if he couldn't have been fitted in under it.