The Broncos have been called out for overpaying young players on potential and not surrounding them with the right hard-nosed veteran forwards that win premierships.
Founding Broncos director and chairman Barry Maranta told AAP that Brisbane must take a leaf out of the Wayne Bennett playbook and recruit “hard heads” in the forward pack.
“I suspect the problem is that we have overpaid young guys. You can’t win with 20 and 21-year-old’s against 28 and 29-year-old’s,” Maranta told AAP.
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'It's very tough on Kevvie' | 01:39
Bulldogs forward Max King joins the Fox League podcast to go inside the Bulldogs’ remarkable 2024 revival and chat about the impact of coach Cameron Ciraldo, captain Stephen Crichton and the club’s renowned defensive system
“The angle that we have taken is that we have paid for potential. I have owned two teams (the Broncos and London Broncos) and I know there is a temptation to do it but it appears as though we didn’t have the money for any hard heads.
“I am hoping to have a coffee with the (hierarchy) and find out where we are going to get our hard heads from.
“You don’t pay for potential. You pay for CVs and scrapbooks.”
The Broncos have a suite of young forwards such as Ben Te Kura (20), Brendan Piakura (22), Jordan Riki (24) and Xavier Willison (22), while Test forwards Payne Haas and Pat Carrigan lead the pack.
Maranta believes the Broncos need more intimidating forwards like club legends Tonie Carroll, Peter Ryan, Trevor Gillmeister, Glenn Lazarus, Shane Webcke, Gorden Tallis and Brad Thorn.
“They do a lot of work but they don’t intimidate,” Maranta said of the Broncos forwards.
“Yes, Capewell is a hard head. All teams needs them. We brought Lazarus up,” Maranta said.
“We can learn from Wayne Bennett and the way he hand-picked his squad.
“If ever you want to look at a classic case of putting a team together look at what Wayne has done at the Dolphins with his forward pack.
“They have got s*** in them like Felise Kaufusi. There are hard heads like the Bromwich brothers (Kenny and Jesse).
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“Remember the media said he couldn’t buy this player or that player but he put a forward pack together with hard heads. Then he got the Hammer (Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow) and Herbie Farnworth. Letting Herbie go (from the Broncos) was the biggest mistake we ever made but Wayne had a bag of money.”
Regardless, Maranta believes under fire coach Kevin Walters is the right man for the job, but he needs to complement his young stars with some veteran enforcers.
“I still think Kevin Walters is the coach who can do the job for us. He just has to get the right cattle but at the moment that is not something we have got,” Maranta said.
“I have the greatest confidence that these guys will deliver but unfortunately we haven’t had enough players with a scrapbook because we have put so much into the potential side.”
However, unlike Maranta, Walters does not believe he needs to make many changes to his current squad.
“I don’t believe we need to. We’ve got enough talent here,” Walters said when asked about recruitment in the off-season.
“I honestly believe that the talent is inside the building. We’ve just got to get that talent all working together in the right direction.“We’ve shown we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.
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“We had five guys, five of our starters. We had four million dollars sitting on the sidelines tonight.
“I’m not sure if anyone realised that, but that’s not, that’s one, you know, we need to be better as a group and as a club than what we were tonight.
“So that’s what the next week is about, finding, getting some reasons, some answers, and then putting that into practice for next year.”
Brisbane’s problems may go beyond simple recruitment decisions though, with Matty Johns critical of the team’s application in defence against the Storm in their 50-12 rout.
“The Harry Grant try coming up, I know they are down in confidence the Broncos, I get that,” Johns said on the Matty Johns show.
“That sort of comes out when you’ve got the football, with errors and being clunky and what not. But some of the defensive stuff, some of that was so lazy.”
Kevvie looking for reasons for poor year | 06:25
Nathan Hindmarsh believes the Broncos’ attitude has been a major problem, particularly in defence.
“The defensive stuff, that doesn’t come from your coach. That comes from you as a player, the markers didn’t split well. Stopped, planted their feet,” Hindmarsh said.
“When Harry Grant is at dummy half he is going to find that out. But the Broncos this year, I know there’s been a bit of pressure on Kevvie.
“They’ve had their injuries they have had a heap in Origin camp, so it’s a heavy fall from grace considering where they were, but I think injuries to key players, they will bounce back.”
Bryan Fletcher added: “Broncos, the same old problems they’ve had all year, their defensive system has just fallen away so badly in 12 months”.
If Walters does go to market, he needs to get the hard-nosed approach to defence instilled back into his team.
