PRE-GAME [Round 3, 2026] - Broncos vs Storm

[kman]

Madge gave the team a 3 day break after Thursday nights game. they're back at training on Monday.

cue the "Madge is too soft" articles this week, lol.

He reportedly got the team together in a corner of the dressing room on after Thursdays match and told them to "be smarter"

Corey Paix said:

“Madge kept it pretty short,”

“He sat us down in a circle and we spoke among ourselves on what we need to do to fix it.

“He said, ‘Just be smarter, be a smarter footballer, play the long game’.

“We’re not prepared to play the long game at the moment.”

“We played dumb really,” Paix said.

“We weren’t resilient enough once it got a bit tough for us. There were a few soft tries that weren’t good enough.

“To be honest, it’s not up to Broncos standard.

“We have to turn it around really quick. Teams are prepared to take us to the deep end but we’re not prepared to do it back to them.

“To concede 40 points isn’t good enough, that’s the disappointing part.

“We need a good hard look in the mirror.”



Brisbane’s desire has come under fire but Paix rubbished suggestions Broncos players have lost their edge in the quest for back-to-back premierships.

“For me personally, yes I’m hungry,” he said.

“We have the team here, but we have to be right in the head mentally.

“We need to be hungrier. That’s the word. We need to go there and take it to Melbourne.

“We’ll get three days off, then we will be back at work on Monday and get back on the horse. We need to fix our attitude up.

“We’re 0-2 at the moment. No-one can be complacent.”

Paix is worthless to this team, how could we let Smoothy go and keep this useless dummyhalf thats keeping Mozer out.

 

[Alfie magic]

Tuned into the St Merge and Melbourne game with 20 mins to go and saw Dragons leading and thought 'yeah that would be right, Storm get shown up by Gutherson and co. and Bellamy rips into them to bounce back in a big way next week'

Then Storm took the lead and I felt better.

Then they scored another 6 tries in about 3 minutes.

And then I felt much, much worse.

It all changed when cook kicked out on the full. And gutherson went off with hia . Up until then saints where holding there own .. but Yeagh. I have my doubts if we even get close ..

 

[Swordfish]

Storm absentees from their grand final starting side:
Papi
Katoa
Blore
Coates
Loeiro

I understand we have looked underdone to start the year but honestly we aim up and we will get our season up and running.

We can own these f**ks!

Leiro will complete his 2 match ban and be ready to go next week. He got suspended because of his head high shot on Piakura towards the back end of GF.

How convenient for those cheat fcuks that he becomes available when we’re due to play them. It has been ingrained in our luck that our opposing teams Injured/suspended players becomes available when they’re due to play against us. It continues to evolve .

 

[GTB!]

How do storm consistently have an NRL-ready fullback as backup who is always just willing to wait their turn?

 

[Bucking Beads]

How do storm consistently have an NRL-ready fullback as backup who is always just willing to wait their turn?

He's a flat track bully. He will be nowhere when the going gets tough..a fancy step doesn't make a gun fullback.

 

[thenry]

I love the Shiba story but he's starting to get found out defensively. I'd be keen to move him into the back row and I'm keen at all in giving him a big $$ deal at his age. There's probably no improvement in him really.

Love the story as well. Thing is, if Walsh misses the last ditch GF tackle, Shiba would have made the costliest missed tackle in Bronx history on Katoa. Lucky boy.

 

[Alfie magic]

He's a flat track bully. He will be nowhere when the going gets tough..a fancy step doesn't make a gun fullback.

Like Walsh then ?

 

[Alfie magic]

Leiro will complete his 2 match ban and be ready to go next week. He got suspended because of his head high shot on Piakura towards the back end of GF.

How convenient for those cheat fcuks that he becomes available when we’re due to play them. It has been ingrained in our luck that our opposing teams Injured/suspended players becomes available when they’re due to play against us. It continues to evolve .

Uncanny. Isn’t it. Always happens.

 

[Sproj]

Loiero isn’t that good and he’ll be underdone. The issue we need to worry about is us. We won’t win anything in the returned six again era with 35% possession, 40 missed tackles and 20 errors. Fix that and we can beat anyone, don’t fix it and we won’t win a game all season. Oh and it would be nice to be able to buy a penalty once in a while after 20 mins.

 

[lynx000]

Man, it’s been a depressing start. The team cohesion or playing for each other is clearly not evident. Of course the coach can see it all clear as a day and will make sure that instead of physically getting them ready I reckon it will be mentally preparing them to quickly turn things around.

So pumped up for the season and it’s been underwhelming so far. I would continue to blame the trip to other side of the world for a garbage exhibition match that meant nothing. Its after effects are over immense.
It’s a dumb idea and would partially blame my idol, Locky.

I would expect changes be made to the 17.

I agree, I think the impact of the travel is being under estimated. Case in point, Cowboys, first game back from Las Vegas, they get touched up by the Tigers. St George, ditto against Melbourne. Sharks, the same against Penrith.

 

[Dash]

Loiero isn’t that good and he’ll be underdone. The issue we need to worry about is us. We won’t win anything in the returned six again era with 35% possession, 40 missed tackles and 20 errors. Fix that and we can beat anyone, don’t fix it and we won’t win a game all season. Oh and it would be nice to be able to buy a penalty once in a while after 20 mins.

I can offer you one in the 78th minute when the game is already over.

 

[Big Pete]

Sharks, the same against Penrith.

I think you're thinking of last year when both Cronulla and Penrith played one another in Las Vegas.

Cronulla only had to travel to Gosford during the pre-season.

Newcastle and Canterbury are the other teams. Canterbury have the bye before travelling to the nation's capital. Newcastle have Manly this afternoon.

 

[Battler]

Tuned into the St Merge and Melbourne game with 20 mins to go and saw Dragons leading and thought 'yeah that would be right, Storm get shown up by Gutherson and co. and Bellamy rips into them to bounce back in a big way next week'

Then Storm took the lead and I felt better.

Then they scored another 6 tries in about 3 minutes.

And then I felt much, much worse.

The dragons had gutho off the field when that glut of scoring happened and were ofc on the receiving end of random six agains all night so were under extreme fatigue. I don’t think the Storm were that good, their edges were poor defensively last year and they’re worse this year.

If we’re not contenders then i think you’ll be seeing melb lose a third straight gf with bloody penref lifting the trophy… again. Hopefully ratings nosedive because that’s all that pvl cares about

 

[Battler]

Madge gave the team a 3 day break after Thursday nights game. they're back at training on Monday.

cue the "Madge is too soft" articles this week, lol.

He reportedly got the team together in a corner of the dressing room on after Thursdays match and told them to "be smarter"

Corey Paix said:

“Madge kept it pretty short,”

“He sat us down in a circle and we spoke among ourselves on what we need to do to fix it.

“He said, ‘Just be smarter, be a smarter footballer, play the long game’.

“We’re not prepared to play the long game at the moment.”

“We played dumb really,” Paix said.

“We weren’t resilient enough once it got a bit tough for us. There were a few soft tries that weren’t good enough.

“To be honest, it’s not up to Broncos standard.

“We have to turn it around really quick. Teams are prepared to take us to the deep end but we’re not prepared to do it back to them.

“To concede 40 points isn’t good enough, that’s the disappointing part.

“We need a good hard look in the mirror.”



Brisbane’s desire has come under fire but Paix rubbished suggestions Broncos players have lost their edge in the quest for back-to-back premierships.

“For me personally, yes I’m hungry,” he said.

“We have the team here, but we have to be right in the head mentally.

“We need to be hungrier. That’s the word. We need to go there and take it to Melbourne.

“We’ll get three days off, then we will be back at work on Monday and get back on the horse. We need to fix our attitude up.

“We’re 0-2 at the moment. No-one can be complacent.”

Queue nrl 360 “that’s what we hear from the Broncos media machine, but can we trust them? How do we know that Madge didn’t have them secretly training at home with 24/7 livestream access to the players’ home gyms? I’m hearing that Haas isn’t happy. Crawls do you think the Broncos should release him early to Wayne?”

 

[Bucking Beads]

Like Walsh then ?

Missed the Grand final did ya

 

[Harry]

The dragons had gutho off the field when that glut of scoring happened and were ofc on the receiving end of random six agains all night so were under extreme fatigue. I don’t think the Storm were that good, their edges were poor defensively last year and they’re worse this year.

If we’re not contenders then i think you’ll be seeing melb lose a third straight gf with bloody penref lifting the trophy… again. Hopefully ratings nosedive because that’s all that pvl cares about

I run a small discretionary betting portfolio for one of my mate's sports betting hedge funds (more for fun than anything else) and my only bets this year are going to be: Storm to make the grand final, Panthers to make the grand final and Storm 13+ / Panthers 13+ in every single game they aren't playing each other or affected by Origin. 4/4 so far.

 

[BroncsFan]

I run a small discretionary betting portfolio for one of my mate's sports betting hedge funds (more for fun than anything else) and my only bets this year are going to be: Storm to make the grand final, Panthers to make the grand final and Storm 13+ / Panthers 13+ in every single game they aren't playing each other or affected by Origin. 4/4 so far.

Multi's in 2021 were similar.

I pulled off a couple 8 or 10 leg multi's mostly with picking the easy winners and then some anytime try scorers.

Manly had a home game you could load up on anytime try scorers like Turbo, 13+ wins and then whoever was right second rower outside Cherry.

This year is looking similar at least for panthers and storm... some others will jump up as well when the form line becomes clearer

 

[Sproj]

The dragons had gutho off the field when that glut of scoring happened and were ofc on the receiving end of random six agains all night so were under extreme fatigue. I don’t think the Storm were that good, their edges were poor defensively last year and they’re worse this year.

If we’re not contenders then i think you’ll be seeing melb lose a third straight gf with bloody penref lifting the trophy… again. Hopefully ratings nosedive because that’s all that pvl cares about

This is the problem with six agains. Penrith weren’t even that good against us either and they smashed us. Now yes we were abysmal but how much of that was down to fatigue?

We were getting a lot of calls our way against Parra and were up by 20 or something until something magically changed at about 25 minutes and we just got smashed by six agains the rest of the game, nek minut we’re getting pummelled by Parra.

Six agains and the whim of the ref are deciding too many games. As Pezet said, there’s no accountability on any of the calls, you just have to get on with it.