As much as the "conspiracy" thing is such an interesting (for some of us anyway) topic to discuss, it misses the point.
There are very obvious inconsistencies, and it goes beyond incompetence. There is too much of a pattern for it to be random chance.
Is there a deliberate conspiracy? I don't know, there are times when it definitely feels like there is. It may just be subconscious bias, I can't rule that out.
If there is a deliberate conspiracy, I have gone to great lengths to point out how, during a game, it wouldn't need more than one complicit person to make it happen, and that is whoever is in charge of giving the video ref directives. One person. It may be more, it probably would be more (because a rogue video-refs boss would be extremely unlikely), because the results we see always seem to be bent towards whatever would be commercially beneficial for the NRL. The argument of needing 10, 50, 100 people to be complicit is ludicrous, because it ignores all of the work that has been put in to make the video ref the undisputed controller of games. They are able to, and have been caught out on many occasions, dictating when the dominant team is about to switch, when to call people off-side, when the 10 metre should be shortened or lengthened, when to blow 6-again, and just about every critical call in the game that will either hamper or aid one team over the other.
The fact that the judiciary and the "Integrity Unit" (lol) have been showing the same favoritism (or disfavour) to the same teams as what occurs on-field suggests that either there is a unified conspiracy, or at the very least, any subconscious bias is ingrained in the overall NRL administration itself, not just a single department.
Why the Broncos have been on the receiving end of consistently damaging treatment has also been hypothesised at length. It could be anything from:
* The Broncos rating well amongst their fans whether winning or not, but the engagement of fans of other clubs is significantly higher when the Broncos are failing or seen to be doing something wrong.
* A lingering disdain from the majority NSW-based league powerbrokers due to our early success and therefore "robbing" NSW teams of their own success.
* Disenfranchising Brisbane-based league fans so that when the Dolphins would enter the competition, there would be large numbers of people who would embrace a second Brisbane team.
And whether there is the possibility of the Broncos owners deliberately sabotaging the Broncos from within, we have a very simple means-and-motive when we know that the majority owners not only profit from league-based media attention, but particularly from negative attention, none more so than when the Broncos are perceived to be in some form of crisis. And we even witnessed a power move by the Broncos board in white-anting Wayne Bennett, who had a massive amount of control over the playing group, the recruitment and retention, as well as vast experience on these matters, in favour of the board itself having much more control over these factors (and the coach having a much more limited scope).
All of the above about a potential conspiracy, whether simply within the NRL itself, or also within the Broncos organisation, or, it simply being a matter of subconscious bias, doesn't actually matter. It is the fact that there is clear favouritism for other teams, and poor treatment of the others, that makes it an unfair playing field for what is supposed to be the highest professional level of an international sport. So it absolutely needs to be exposed in order to correct it.
So far this year, it has appeared to most Broncos fans that we are not receiving the same negative treatment of previous years in this 2023 season. And as a result, we are at the top of the table (which blatantly flies in the face of the idea that the sort of calls we previously received should not have hampered us any more than it does any other team). But who knows, maybe that was just another NRL scheme in order to make the Broncos vs Dolphins match such a massive occasion (and you'd be naïve to think that the club's standings on the ladder at the time would not have made the event more successful commercially). But again, regardless, it is not acceptable for a club to be merely a pawn used to assist in the commercial success of the NRL, even if that means we are actually being promoted on this occasion. The mere existence of bias in a professional sport like ours needs to be exposed and eliminated, wherever it is that it is originating.
