Brisbane Broncos legends Corey Parker and Sam Thaiday have revealed how they bounced back from missing finals at the glamour club and provided an outline to how the current team can follow the same pathway.
The Broncos won’t play finals football for the fourth time in the past five years after going within minutes of a seventh premiership in 2023.
It will be the ninth time in the club’s decorated history they have missed finals, while Parker and Thaiday only missed the finals twice in their career in Brisbane.
The second time was in 2013, with Thaiday as captain, when the Broncos bounced back to make the postseason in 2014 and two years later play in a grand final and the pair revealed how the club returned to their powerhouse ways.
“Well you need a clear and concise plan on where you went wrong and why you went wrong, you need some great, brutal honesty within the group and you all need to understand what needs to happen moving forward,” Parker said on SENQ Mornings.“You cannot negotiate or deviate from that.
“In 2013 we didn’t play in the finals, 14’ we did and 15’ we played in a grand final, so there has to be change, without change you don’t get the success moving forward.
“I’ve got no doubt, and I’ve said this openly, the Broncos need to uncover what went wrong, look it squarely in the eye, have some hard and honest truths in regards to how they’re going to fix it going forward.
“It’s not easy, it is not going to be easy.
“Everyone needs to be going in that same direction, if they don’t want to be a part of that that’s fine, they need to identify those people and dismiss them out of the club.”
Thaiday said the hardest part was, and would be for the current Broncos, the players not turning on each other and pointed to the current squad’s depth, saying the club was “like a lasagna”.
“It’s always had layers to it, you need the really nice marinara sauce, you need the good quality half/half with beef and pork mince and we’ve always had those layers of players,” he said on SENQ Mornings.
“I go back to the ’06 grand final team and throughout that season we had our Shane Webcke’s, our Petero Civoniceva’s, our Darren Lockyer’s and our next guys under that in your Dane Carlaw, your Corey Parker’s and your Casey Maguire’s and you had these young guys coming through that were trying to have a crack.
“I think this year we’ve really seen that… the next guys up aren’t really experienced enough to go out there and make sure we can seal some of those close games.”
Parker also said he found it “interesting” the Broncos were letting a quality forward like Kobe Hetherington negotiate with other clubs but praised CEO Dave Donaghy coming out and backing coach Kevin Walters.
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