Welcome to The Pony Picayune, a monthly newsletter about the Brisbane Broncos.
In news from a weird parallel reality, the Brisbane Lions won a premiership, ending a twenty year drought and proving that it is possible, easy even, to lose a grand final and go one better the following year.
That same week, in the same city, the Kevolution came to an end. Bells pealed across the city at City Hall and St Stephen’s Cathedral, at Hamilton and Sandgate, at Wynnum and Sunnybank, in a mix of solemnity and optimism. When asked what the long term ramifications of the Kevolution would be, Mao Zedong1 replied that it was too soon to tell.
Like the French Revolution, the Kevolution had its twists and turns but its march was largely upwards until it wasn’t.
Walters, a well-known hero of an earlier era, was called to power to clean up the mess of Anthony Seibold, a little piggy blowhard on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. In the middle of a pandemic and dealing with the attendant psychological stresses, turning 3-17, a wooden spoon and the worst season in the club’s history into 7-17, fourteenth and the second worst season in the club’s history was not nothing but it did lack a certain je ne sais quoi about the club’s prospects. Then Adam Reynolds and Kurt Capewell threw their lots in with the Broncos. The Kevolution had momentum.
Walters’ Broncos posted a winning record in 2022, 13-11, even if they missed finals thanks to a mix of what would become a trademark blend of myopia and hubris, paired with a chronic lack of ability. The result was a classic Broncos chokejob where everyone could see it. This famine of results was meant to make the Broncos hungrier still for success, a prospect that seemed extremely dubious until Reece Walsh, a brash and ambitious prodigal son, returned home, now unwanted by the Warriors but older and (somewhat) wiser.
A levée en masse of effort, every player contributing the absolute peak of their powers, in 2023 allowed the Kevolution to reach its greatest heights, a commanding and bombastic artillery that loudly announced the arrival of a new great power in the league. 18-5, second place, a 26-0 shutout win over the Storm in the finals, followed by a crushing victory over the Warriors in the preliminary and some of the best damn football you’ve ever seen. An Ezra Mam hattrick all but sealed the premiership and you know the rest.
2024 started poorly - Vegas, Spencer Leniu, injuries, etc - and then faltered, first slowly then all at once. There was talk of when, not if, we make finals. There was inexplicable resting of players to that end, even though that end was nowhere in sight. Casualties mounted. The victories never came. The losses got worse. 10-14, well outside the finals and three big fat Ls to the Titans and Dolphins.
A narrow loss in a grand final didn’t seem like much of a prize anymore. Everyone looked fed up, inept and out of ideas but it was very clear. No one actually believed in the Kevolution.
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I would have said the club was far too timid to take a swing on a lesser known up-and-comer but I also didn’t think we’d be discussing the dismissal of Walters in Vendémiaire 233. Installing a former coach into the directorate is a retrograde move. Retreads are not exactly what gets the people singing.
But there were no ideal candidates available, and few even among those that aren’t available, so Dave Donaghy tapped the former Kiwis, Tigers, Rabbitohs and Wigan coach, Michael Maguire to play Napoleon to Walters’ Barras and Seibold’s Robespierre.
That Maguire is the current Blues coach feels distasteful, at best, but perhaps this is a sign we are finally growing up as a club, maturing into an apathetic middle aged stasis of mediocrity (perhaps I am just projecting?), instead of hanging on to the petty injustices of the past. Also, at least it wasn’t Trent Barrett.
Undoubtedly, the chorus of Thermidorian old boys will be in the background, baying for blood over this decision. It will not be clear blood of who, exactly, or for what purpose, but blood nonetheless is demanded.
If we are in need of a restoration of autocracy, Maguire might be the most promising option. I am personally less convinced that is what the Broncos need and isn’t just people talking themselves into a decision they found out about yesterday, a decision that was clearly made weeks, if not months, ago if the speed of the coup is anything to judge by.
In lieu of setting unrealistic expectations shortly after the formal announcement is made, there are two early signs I’ll be looking for.
If Maguire’s first act is to punt the nepobaby Billy Walters and his contract into the Enoggera Reservoir, that’ll be something. Even if everything that follows is a total disaster, and it may well be, it’ll be worth it for that. This mooted total disaster would also still not invalidate the decision to punt Walters the Elder in the first place.
If the word “rebuild” passes anyone’s lips, it’s over and could not be more over. Red Hill doesn’t need a rebuild. Brisbane needs someone to carry the work of the Kevolution through to a post-revolutionary utopia2. There will be nods to the past, to sate the old guard, but what is needed is a new and coherent cultural force to smash the prevailing, outdated modes. If things start poorly in 2025 and there is a single mention of rebuilding, it will be the first signpost on the Seibold express to the guillotine.
The civic nightmare is dead. Long live the civic nightmare.
Intermission
In what was a pretty crappy season, there are still worse ways to spend your time than punching in “Brisbane Broncos best tries of” to YouTube and enjoying the results.
The women’s Broncos team haven’t won a finals game since 2020’s premiership. That’s three prelims in four years with zero to show for it. The seasons might be short but four years is still four years. It’s the difference between a young up-and-comer and a grizzled veteran.
It was a four team league the last time the Broncos got it done. The Roosters have the best regular season record since then (21-7), won the 2021 premiership and have punched their ticket to the 2024 decider. The next best are Newcastle and Brisbane, tied at 18-10, but whereas the Knights won the 2022 and 2023 premierships, the Broncos won nothing. The expansion epoch has not been kind.
In 2023, Brisbane did well to take it to Newcastle and only lose by six, after just scraping into the finals in fourth place. In 2024, the Broncos were minor premiers and had beaten their opponents just two weeks earlier. Cronulla lost to the wooden spooners the week before. Brisbane could not be heavier favourites.
The early phase of the game featured a boatload of Sharks possession. There was a point with eight minutes to go in the first half that the Broncos, down six, finally had the ball in good field position. It was a chance to right the balance. Pressure built over the next five minutes in which the Sharks only touched the ball to set for drop outs. Brisbane were surely on the verge of breaking the line. The Broncos eventually turned the ball over with a kick too deep. Five minutes of possession, no points and it wasn’t even close. They were in trouble.
It wasn’t that the Broncos had reverted to their early, inconsistent form, the kind that I was deeply suspicious of in the pre-season. In this game, the Mares defended well, conceding only two tries plus a third that really should not have been given. This was well down on the 17.3 points conceded per game during the regular season, the franchise’s best rate since their last minor premiership in 2021. The offence that carried them through that early awful phase into seven straight wins, running at over 30 points per game (a rate bettered in the NRLW only by the ‘22 and ‘23 Roosters), went missing.
The forwards going up the middle couldn’t get going. There were no seams around the edges to probe. The outside backs had no space or, if they did, dropped the ball. As the game went on, as Keilee Joseph and Ali Brigginshaw took on more responsibility to force their will to get downfield, the attack went further sideways. It was horizontal by full time.
Everything that had worked stopped working. Their reward is that they get a good long time to work out how it all went wrong.
Again.
News
Cobbo shopping around for a mil? See ya buddy. Newscorp reported the Broncos have signed Latrell… Siegwalt… on a train and trial… to see if he can replace Sailor. Or maybe it'll be Hayze Perham? Ben Te’o, incoming assistant from Redcliffe, publicly asked someone to sign Valynce Te Whare. The Raiders had a sniff around persona non grata, Cory Paix. Most of this is stale, and worse irrelevant, because Maguire will undoubtedly have Some Ideas about recruitment.
Lot of news about backs, where’s the bloody news about forwards? Reagan Campbell-Gillard alone isn’t going to cut it and he’s not even really in the frame. I don’t know if Maguire can yell Jordan Riki into a functional first grader.
Robert Craddock wrote an incredibly stupid column - Was Anthony Seibold really the problem at Brisbane Broncos? - whose final paragraph was a reasonable thought but the conspicuous omissions and ball gargling of Seibold along the way was hilariously bad. The Sea Eagles’ subsequent loss to the Roosters, 40-16, was suitable punctuation, with some bold and italics added when those same Roosters were dicked by 30 the following week by a real team. The Broncos are more than capable of losing by 60 to the Storm as is, thank you very much. But since the Broncos fired Walters, I have no desire to vivisect this (or the player blaming one if the headline is anything to go by, I didn’t dignify it with a click) to make us feel better.
Rewind
As we bid farewell to Kevin Walters, we remember his other Broncos swansong as a player. We will forget his handful of games at the end of a pretty average 2001 season, much as we may as well forget the time he spent as coach after the 60 minute mark of the 2023 grand final.
The full game on the NRL website wouldn't load (see thesis #7) and I don’t remember things that happened 24 years ago, so we’ll just have to take these 12 minutes as a complete representation of the 80 minute grand final.
The 2000 NRL grand final featured the so-called Sydney Roosters, reprising their role as the Washington Generals of the 90s. The Blues-stacked side seemed to mostly serve as traffic cones for the Broncos offence, rarely seen with the ball in hand.
Kev doesn't feature a whole lot in this package himself but he's there and it's briefly referenced that he's coming to the end of his career, which featured six grand final wins, five with Brisbane and one with Canberra. There wouldn't be many players with a more highly decorated club career.
See ya, Kev. I don’t hate you - the highest praise I can offer a departing coach - although I will not miss you, especially as you are going to parachute back into a job on Fox.
Or maybe Zhou Enlai, I’m not looking it up.
Please do not look up what happened to Napoleon, especially at the Battle of Waterloo.