COACH’S CORNER: Why it’s time for whingeing players and media to leave Michael Maguire alone

In the era of click bait, some headlines can go crazy!

“Madge facing toughest test of career after brutal Broncos start” screamed a headline on Monday, after Michael Maguires Broncos had lost their round one match to the Penrith Panthers, hot-on-the-heels of losing the World Club Challenge to Hull Kingston Rovers two weeks earlier.

Firstly, this headline is the biggest load of tosh I've read in a while!

But then, it's sister masthead online, offered the following a few hours later.

(The Broncos season)“May fall apart': Madge's ugly ‘reputation' driving Broncos' pressure-cooker after ‘stinker'”

I cannot decide which headline is worse, more disrespectful or hyperbolic. Answers on a postcard please.

When the coach known as Madge took over before the 2025 season, the Broncos were not even playing finals the year before and according to many, had a ‘rock star culture'.

“Fans fed up with Broncos' ‘rock-star' mentality” screamed one headline from a masthead that ran a fans-poll.

“Why Madge must draw ‘line in sand' over ‘rock star' Broncos” ran another headline just as Maguire took over the reins at Red Hill.

Granted, the players were developing a reputation for high jinks in the Brisbane community, and some of it ended up on social media.

A former player of mine who works in pub and club security in Brisbane, told me that some of the players were regularly “on the town” and were “as loose as it gets” back then.

Ezra Mam and Reece Walsh also ended up in a strange situation on an end-of-season holiday in Bali.

The final straw for many was when Mam ended up in very big trouble off the field, after which he pleaded guilty in court to one count of driving with drugs present in his blood, and driving without a licence. Not only that, he was driving his ute when it collided with an Uber that had passengers.

This court appearance was in December 2024 and the punishment of a relatively small fine and six-months disqualified from driving didn't fit the crime, according to many in the media and the grandstands.

On top of this, the Broncos had only finished in 12th in 2024. They suffered an awful end to their season, thrashed by Melbourne Storm in 50-12 at home in the final game.

After reaching the 2023 grand final, this was their biggest fall in history.

Yet Broncos fans were starting to get used to mediocrity, or worse.

In 2020, the Brisbane Broncos finished in the wooden spoon position for the one and only time in their history.

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The years after the 2006 premiership win were a catalogue of close-calls and disappointments.

It is fair to say Michael Maguire had walked into a club that was in all sorts off the field and had never really worked out how to win premierships since Master coach Wayne Bennett had left the hot-seat.

Maguire came with a resume that included titles on both sides of the rugby league world. After guiding Wigan to the promised land in the early 2010's, he managed to get Souths over the winning line in 2014 for the first time since 1971; a mere 43 years between drinks.

No doubt believing he could turn the rugby league equivalent of water into wine, Maguire arrived at Wests Tigers in 2019.

A coaching graveyard for many before and one since, the merged outfit didn't do Madge's reputation any good, particularly after a behind the scenes documentary seemed to show the coach shouting at his players a bit too much for some peoples' liking.

When he left the Tigers in 2022, it's fair to say Maguire was no longer hot property in club coaching, so he turned his hand to the New Zealand national side.

A World Cup semi-final in 2022 ran Australia very close, but a year later in the Pacific Championship final, NZ put Australia to the sword to take the crown.

In 2024, Maguires reputation was restored after he managed to steer New South Wales to an Origin series win; their first in three campaigns, and one of only four series wins from the last ten.

Despite this, the legacy media still welcomed Maguire to Brisbane with an undercurrent of noise around his tough reputation as a coach.
One ultra-experienced journalist went so far as to say that the Broncos were being “overtrained” as they slumped to their fourth lost in five games last May.

Leaks from the playing group or close to the playing group appear to have been a facet of goings on at Red Hill for the last five-or-six years. And here it was again, looking to isolate the coach and his methods.

Methods that saw Brisbane Broncos win their first premiership in twenty years last October.

Methods that brought the best out of players such as Reece Walsh, Kotoni Staggs, Ezra Mam, Payne Haas and others when it mattered most.
Those with short memories will recall that Reece Walsh was the poster boy for everything wrong at the club, not just off the field, but on it, too during the tough 2024 season.

But Michael Maguure helped Walsh and his teammates play the best football they have in a long-time when the whips were cracking in September and the first weekend of October 2025.

Winning is all that matters in professional sport.

The noise and the hyperbolic headlines have started again after an abject round one performance last week.

Yet those critical commentators and the players who like to leak to the media, seem to forget a few things.

Firstly, Craig Bellamy and Wayne Bennett are two of the toughest task masters in rugby league and they have, between them, collected plenty of Grand Final winners and runners up rings over the last thirty-plus years.

They know how to win. As does Madge.

The NRL isn't tiddlywinks. It's the toughest rugby league competition on the planet and the sport is one of the toughest on the planet.
Players leaking complaints to the media belong in reserve grade or at the bottom of the NRL ladder, not the top.

Secondly, Brisbane played in England for the World Club title on Thursday February 19th, which was actually the morning of Friday February 20th in Australia at the time.

Exactly two weeks later, they were playing against the side that had won the previous four titles, Penrith Panthers, back in Brisbane.
As someone who has flown between England and Australia more times than I can count, I can promise you that jet-lag, lingers, even if you do everything right to avoid it.

It impacts the chemicals in your body, which impact...everything in your body! Especially, processing meals and sleeping!

Also, you'd never factor in a return flight between the two countries with a goal of peaking in performance two weeks later!

A general rule of thumb is to allow one day to get over jet-lag for every hour or time difference that there is between destinations after flying.

That means if the Broncos left England on Saturday the 21st of February Australian time, jet-lag had every chance of still playing its part in the Broncos preparations when they would have landed back in Australia two calendar days later, on the 23rd.

And, using our rule of thumb, they could definitely count out jet-lag symptoms as a factor in their performance after ten days, as there is currently ten hours-time difference between Brisbane and Hull, where the Broncos played.

Ten days takes us to the day before the Broncos played Penrith.

If you thought the Broncos looked ‘heavy-legged', sluggish and slow in the opening round, then you are very likely, absolutely on the money.

They would have trained for much of that game with many players still not completely and utterly recovered from the flight back from the UK. Even if many medical markers indicated they had.

So, rest easy Broncos fans, there's a long way to go yet.

And the media laying in? Didn't the premiership win last season shut you up? It should have done!

Lee Addison is a former club coach at Sea Eagles and Panthers and the founder of rugbyleaguecoach.com.au. He is a Coach Mentor and his programmes for coaches and clubs can be found HERE. He is also currently offering some FREE courses for coaches.