Below par Broncos

Along with new premiers the Sydney Roosters, the Brisbane Broncos are a glamour club of the NRL. With immediate success leading to six premierships in their short history they quickly became a club that supporters from south of the Tweed loved to hate.

Despite never seeming to have a year where they run at the basement of the table for me they are often the biggest disappointment in the NRL.

The facts are these. They are the only club in a rugby league mad city, leading to competition leading numbers in average attendance and membership, the latter being over 35,000 - more than 5,000 more than South Sydney in second place.

Further, they enjoy massive corporate support by having a monopoly on the corporate opportunities to draw on in the river city. This means the opportunity for business to contribute to third party agreements to aid the club in retention and recruitment is unparalleled in the NRL, therefore they have the ability to hold more talent in their squad than any other club.

They also have access to the majority of the Intrust Super Cup and should be picking out the best players to put into their junior system.

Local players like Cameron Smith don't come around often and he should have been wearing Brisbane colours for 400 games instead of becoming an immortal in Melbourne.

Another advantage is young players will take less money to stick near to home. The Broncos have advantages over every single NRL club.

Six premierships in 30 years is an amazing record, ask Parramatta, however they have not won since 2006. Six titles in those first 18 seasons is about right for a club like the Brisbane Broncos. Not winning for 12 years is a fail.

The confirmation of Wayne Bennett being moved on with reported attempts to lure Anthony Siebold and previous attempts for the games best coach Craig Bellamy show that at least Paul White isn’t sitting on his hands.

Pushing out a club legend like Bennett is a brave call and indicative of his realisation that failure isn't an option at Red Hill.

Being thrashed by the Dragons at Suncorp Stadium to finish the competition in 7th spot is below par, in fact anything less than a preliminary finals appearance given the resources they enjoy that are superior to the other 15 clubs they compete against should be viewed as a failure.

Time will tell who will coach them beyond 2019 but the pressure to deliver will be on immediately, and rightly so.