Brisbane Broncos legend Corey Parker has unloaded on his former side after the defending premiers handed the St George Illawarra Dragons their first win in 295 days.
The Broncos had the perfect opportunity to snap a three-game losing streak on a sunny afternoon at a boisterous Suncorp Stadium.
As a result, it turned out to be a disastrous encounter for the Broncos, who failed to get out of second gear, going down 30-26 on Sunday.
Serious pressure is mounting on the Red Hill-based club as they begin to look like a side with a considerable amount of premiership fatigue.
Sitting in 11th place, one of their most capped players in Parker, voiced his disappointment as the 347-gamer watched on as the last-placed Red V outclassed the Broncos for most of the contest.
The club was well-rested following a bye-week and had extra time to prepare for the Dragons' arrival in Brisbane.
“The disappointing thing, aside from what they produced, they come off a bye,” Parker said on SENQ Breakfast.
“We spoke to Ben Hunt on Friday, and (he) said ‘Yep, traditionally, sometimes they train, and Madge (Michael Maguire) has been known for overworking, over-training them, etc'.
“Well, he gave them four days off.
“He said, ‘Get away from football, spend it with your families, enjoy the break, come back'.
“So, they get a home game, 42,000 people turned up, dry pitch, no rain, dry pitch, which really leans into their style of football, an expansive, fast, up-tempo style of football.
“Coming off the bye, they've had four days off, and they tossed up that."
Parker expected more from his beloved Broncos, with the club now under critical pressure to win as many games as they can to stay in touch with the good half of the Top 8.
“I mean, it's unacceptable and look they need to have a look at what has transpired in the week leading up, cause Madge said it was a pretty good preparation," he added.
“But they just did not turn up where they needed to in those little areas, the standard areas that they hold in high regard.
“Because what they displayed yesterday at home, they're on their heels, they were flat, like they weren't on the balls of their feet, they weren't pushing forward. One person would take a run; the rest would sit back.
“And they had probably their strongest team that they could field for some time.”
Despite a nasty injury toll in their title defense season, some of the Broncos' senior players missed the jump when defending against the Dragons.
Departing superstar Payne Haas expressed his disappointment with the club's performance in his return game from injury.
When speaking with ABC Sport shortly after full-time on Sunday, Haas said the club was "all talk" and needed to act quickly in rectifying their effort areas.
“I don't know what to say, we were really poor and it was one of the worst performances I've been a part of,” Haa said.
“I felt like it was all of us. We had no intent, no energy. I was pretty disappointed. We save it until the last 10 minutes to play our footy.
“We are all talk at the moment. We keep on saying we are going to do all these important things on the field, but to be honest we are just ‘BS-ing' each other.
“We've done a lot of talking the last few weeks. It's not coming up.
“We'll keep on going back to the drawing board, get our preparation right and hopefully the tide will turn soon.”
The Broncos will turn their attention towards their south-east Queensland neighbour, the Gold Coast Titans, and look to get back into the winner's circle and snap a four-game win drought.
