Breaking news: Secret NRL letter discovered

Dear Brisbane Broncos,

As the governing body of the NRL competition, it is vital that we monitor the activities of each club to ensure that it is running smoothly and progressively.

With so many stake-holders invested deeply in the game, presenting a quality product on a weekly basis both on and off the field is something we take very seriously at head office. Fans, sponsors and media do all they can to promote our competition; continuing to sell the code to an ever-increasing number of people around the country.

Ensuring that the clubs are meeting their end of the bargain by constantly monitoring performance is an important part of what we do here at headquarters.

We made a special note of your performance in the elimination final against the Eels on Sunday afternoon at Bankwest Stadium and have identified a few issues which are of great concern to us.

Frankly, we were very disappointed with your effort on the day. How a team could possibly manage to lose a final by 58 points is simply beyond us. The embarrassing nature of the loss had many neutral fans demanding a refund at the box office as they left the stadium.

Young fans were visually affected, with many young children wearing Broncos jumpers seen in tears as the masses flooded from the stadium. The local McDonalds outlet reported multiple sightings of sobbing young Brisbane fans in their restaurant, with parents raiding the bathrooms to acquire sufficient toilet paper to stem their flow of tears.

This is not a good look.

The NRL competition relies on a certain level of competition and despite our best efforts, Brisbane appear to be dragging the chain; impersonating a decent team every once in a while, before finally displaying the true horrors below the surface with such an underwhelming performance in a final.

What saddens us all here at the NRL is the amount of work we have done to ensure your success. Disappointingly and despite our best efforts, you appear to have found a way to turn yourselves into something of a laughing stock in recent times.

Some years back we locked you into your own little Friday night time slot at Suncorp Stadium for home matches. We ensured you almost always played at night and enjoyed the most consistent turnaround length between matches of any team in the competition.

Now, even with Thursday night football in vogue, we stuck to our part of the bargain. 2019 presented you with three Thursday night matches and six in your comfy Friday slot. ANZAC Round saw the necessity to slate one Saturday night match with another played in the Saturday twilight.

Of your 12 home games, our little night time deal saw just one Sunday afternoon match played and the local derby against the Titans should have been a walk in the park considering our planning. Amazingly, you managed to make a right mess of that and lost 26-18 to the wooden spooners.

To compensate for that day time game we gifted you a dream run to the finals with six of your last nine matches at home. Your bumbling effort against the Bulldogs in Round 25 was a warning sign and we considered writing to you at that time, however, we erred on the side of faith.

Our faith in you has now been extinguished.

Our continued stifling of the ‘second team in Brisbane’ movement appears to have gone unappreciated, as does your seeming inability to capitalise on the vast youth catchment area at your disposal.

The advantage of the available corporate dollar in a one-team city does not appear to be aiding your efforts as it once did and for some bizarre reason, you moved on arguably the greatest coach of the modern era, in favour of some guy full of clichés and mumbo-jumbo.

In short, we would like to know exactly what in heaven’s name you are doing. Despite the creation of the most unlevel playing field, your club appears to be in decline.

Sunday’s performance was the exclamation point on that opinion and made Mitchell Moses look like Reg Gasnier, Peter Sterling and Clive Churchill all rolled into one.

We cannot have teams producing such displays in the future and request an immediate written response that convinces the NRL board that the Brisbane Broncos are indeed worthy of a spot in the 2020 competition.

We anticipate your response,

The NRL

Editor's note: If you can't tell by now, the above letter is a satirical piece, and isn't the view of the NRL.