Broncos centre Kotoni Staggs has hit back at Brisbane’s “haters” after club great Gorden Tallis suggested veteran halfback Adam Reynolds should be replaced as captain. Brisbane’s NRL finals hopes hang by a thread, with last weekend’s home defeat to Canterbury meaning Kevin Walters’ side needs to win every one of their five remaining games to have a chance of finishing the regular season in the top eight, starting with Saturday’s crunch match against the Titans.
The loss to the Bulldogs was the Broncos’ seventh defeat in eight games and the backlash has been brutal against a side that came so close to winning the grand final last year. Pressure has been mounting on Walters but several of the club’s old boys such as Tallis and two-time premiership winner Chris Johns say the blame should lie with the players.
Tallis was particularly scathing in his assessment of Reynolds, who missed 11 weeks of the season with a ruptured bicep but returned to help snap the club’s six-game losing streak in round 20. It proved a false dawn for the Broncos as Reynolds was unable to get his attack firing against the Bulldogs, who blew Brisbane off the park on their own home ground.
“I think the team is lacking leadership. I watch them closely… on Saturday somebody needed to stand up and put a stake in the ground,” Tallis said on Fox Sports’ NRL 360. “(Reynolds) didn’t do it, and in the grand final he didn’t get them home either. If he’s the captain and he’s not doing it, there might be a chance to put Pat Carrigan there…
“In that game on the weekend, under the pump, if I’m playing with Allan Langer, he gets out from dummy half, he does three or four tackles in a row, he looks at us and challenges us. There’s none of that happening at the moment. So maybe there should be a change with (the person) who gets the C next to their name.”
Broncos throw support behind skipper Adam Reynolds
But the Broncos rallied around Reynolds at training on Wednesday, with Staggs insisting the veteran No.7 is crucial to the side’s success and has the full support of everyone at the club. “(Reynolds) has just come back from being out injured (for 11 weeks) and you can’t blame him for what we have been doing. They will pick out anything they can and we just ignore it,” Staggs said.
“One hundred per cent (Reynolds is the right man to captain Brisbane). He has done it for the last two years. He led us to a grand final last year. It is not just on Adam. There are 13 guys on the footy field to play their part. I still believe he can lead us to a grand final.”
Broncos club great Johns – who won premierships with Brisbane in 1992 and 1993 – also called out the Broncos’ biggest stars and said they needed to show more will to win during games. Johns told SEN Radio that the Broncos players had received “too many pats on the back” while other pundits have accused the players of reading too much into their own press and believing the hype.
But Staggs says the criticism from some of the past greats at the club is nothing new. “It has been like that in the past. I was here in 2020 when we hit rock bottom and it is just the same old thing coming back out,” he added. “We have a great bunch of boys here and we have to stay strong and have each other’s back. That noise doesn’t get inside these doors here and we just brush it off…
“There is going to be pressure on the Broncos. We are a big organisation. Whether we are winning or losing there are still people hating us. They don’t like to see the Broncos win. We know what we have got to do and we will do it. I still believe this team can go all the way. I am not going to give up and certainly all the boys here are not going to give up. We are going to go out there (against the Titans) and put everything on the line.”
