Lockyer’s gutting admission as ‘inexplicable’ Broncos detail laid bare

Broncos director Darren Lockyer stood in the middle of Suncorp Stadium on Thursday night and made a dejected admission, conceding the atrocious fall “hurts a lot of people at the club”.

When attention turned to Phil Gould on Nine’s post-game coverage of Brisbane’s 46-20 thrashing at the hands of Melbourne, the rugby league heavy hitter shone the blowtorch on the Broncos’ “inexplicable” slide in differential.

Brisbane slumped to its 16th loss of the season on Thursday night – and its ninth consecutive loss at Suncorp Stadium, a fortress no more.

The glamour club’s title defence was already the worst by a reigning premier since Western Suburbs collected the wooden spoon in 1953.

And the NRL added to the Broncos’ ignominy by trialling a kick-off rule change in their match against the Storm. No longer in contention to play finals football, the Broncos and Storm – the latter have been far more respectable this year – were turned into guinea pigs.

Bewildered, presenter James Bracey asked Lockyer how the Broncos had fallen so far so quickly.

“We’re still trying to work that out, to be honest,” Lockyer replied.

“It happened in ’24 after we went to a grand final in ‘23. There were a lot of lessons learned in ‘24, and coming into ’26, we tried to put things in place to prevent complacency. For whatever reason, we haven’t been able to prevent it again in 2026.

“... It’s been really disappointing, and it hurts a lot of people at the club.

“But like anything in life, it’s about how you react to it – and that’s up to the Broncos next year.”

At the end of the 2025 regular season, the Broncos had a differential of +172. They had scored 680 points and leaked 508.

With one game to go this season – a match against the Bulldogs in Sydney next Thursday night – their differential is -220. They have scored only 437 points, and let in 657.

Gould is dumbfounded.

“The size and the magnitude of their losses is what gets me ... Not just the fact they’ve lost a lot of games, but in some of those games they’ve been flogged,” the former NSW Blues coach said.

“... Yep, they’ve had a lot of injuries, but so have a lot of other sides. They’ve got a very strong, talented roster that runs deep.”

Gould suspected a great deal of “soul-searching” lay ahead for the Broncos, but backed the club to bounce back in 2027.

“They’re our biggest club in the NRL, and I’m sure they’re embarrassed about this season’s performance,” he added.

“They’ve got one game to go next week in Sydney just to salvage something out of it.

“But I can’t get over the size of the deficit between last year’s for and against and this year’s. It’s just inexplicable for how the defending premiers have gone.”

In Michael Maguire’s post-game press conference, one journalist asked the under-fire coach if he was the man to turn the team around.

“You ask me this every day,” Maguire shot back.

The two-time premiership coach then sidestepped around the question.

“I know what this group’s capable of, as we’ve shown at times throughout the year, but we need to be smarter and better at times within games. I could go through many games where we’ve just shot ourselves when we’ve put ourselves in a position to go for it, and that comes with a bit of confidence and belief around what we’re doing, and we can grow that very quickly. This group’s shown that over its history.

“... Moving into the future, [it’s about] going back to some of the things that when I got here they instilled inside what makes great teams, because it’s inside them.”

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