Siebold fires home truths
BRONCOS coach Anthony Seibold has turned the blowtorch on his leadership group in a stinging address that threatens to rip the heart out of the senior core and spark a Red Hill revolution.
Cultural change is coming ahead of today’s board meeting, with internal data showing just 50 per cent of Broncos players are meeting the performance benchmarks Seibold believes are required to be a premiership contender.
Alarmingly, a woeful 15 per cent of the squad were able to meet Seibold’s specific highperformance standards when the coach first arrived at the Broncos in December.
The internal testing not only involves data from GPS tracking, but strength-andconditioning programs and statistics taken from the individual output of Broncos players during the 2019 season.
Put simply, the Broncos are mentally and athletically inferior to NRL powerhouses Melbourne and the Roosters, prompting Seibold to deliver some withering home truths to Brisbane’s senior group on Wednesday.
The Cairns Post understands Seibold didn’t pull punches with Origin, Test and grand-final servants Alex Glenn, Anthony Milford, Matt Gillett, Corey Oates, Andrew McCullough, Joe Ofahengaue and skipper Darius Boyd.
The player review was pencilled into Brisbane’s season schedule before last Sunday’s 58-0 debacle against the Eels.
What wasn’t initially planned was the ferocity of Seibold’s message and the cultural improvements the coach believes are necessary to give Brisbane a harder edge to break the club’s 13-year premiership drought.
The group was told that, instead of setting a performance tone for Brisbane’s rookies, they were being shown up by the likes of young guns Payne Haas, Jake Turpin, Pat Carrigan and Kotoni Staggs.
Gillett has escaped many of the brickbats that have been thrown at Boyd, Milford and McCullough but Broncos powerbrokers were far from enthused with his contribution this season.
While allowances were made because Gillett was returning from a serious neck injury, Brisbane chiefs want to see more overt signs of off-field leadership from the Queensland Origin back-rower.
The Broncos need Oates, who turns 25 next month, to display more maturity, and Ofahengaue to step up now that he is an Origin forward.
Brisbane’s playing-roster dynamic is precariously balanced.
There is an internal sentiment that Brisbane’s senior core has become too complacent, with $1 million man Milford the prime poster boy.
If the leadership group doesn’t drive greater standards of accountability and performance, Seibold has the support of the Broncos board to wield the axe with a perform-or-perish mantra.