Michael Maguire has vowed he won’t change his demanding coaching style as he faces one of the greatest tests of his career – restoring the pride of fallen premiers Brisbane.
From the shock decision by Payne Haas to defect to South Sydney and the inconsistency of 2025 hero Reece Walsh to speculation about dressing-room division, the factors attributed to the Broncos’ historic slide are wide and varied enough to merit a doctoral thesis.
The worst title defence since Western Suburbs in 1953, Brisbane’s dramatic descent has been doubly chastening given their juggernaut status and production line of stars.
In a campaign post-mortem with this masthead, Maguire conceded that premiership glory last year may have concealed existing weaknesses at the Broncos and given players a false sense of invincibility, revealing that “alarm bells were ringing” as far back as the World Club Challenge in February.
In a departure from the club’s previous guardedness, he also spoke about sacked predecessor Kevin Walters, whose ousting less than 12 months after a grand final appearance cleared the way for Maguire to take over but angered Brisbane greats.
The club will conduct its own review of the Broncos’ annus horribilis in a bid to climb the ladder again in 2027, but the coach has made clear that bending from his hardline approach to fitness and discipline is not on the agenda.
“Five out of six organisations where I’ve been head coach have tasted success, and they were all given a hard reset,” Maguire said. “And the reason I haven’t changed my philosophy is because it works. I didn’t invent this. The hardest workers have the greatest prospect of success.
“Have I had to change the way I talk to people along the way? One hundred per cent. Because everyone’s different. But I have senior players here at the Broncos right now pleading with me to stay the course because they know what is required to win the NRL premiership. And I won’t change and I owe it to the club not to change because you simply can’t take your foot off the pedal.”
Brisbane’s failure this year has given fuel to the perception that Maguire is a leader who can take a team to the top – as he did with South Sydney, Wigan, New Zealand and NSW before delivering the Broncos their first NRL title since 2006 – but has a limited shelf life.
But after cycling through four coaches in eight years, he does not believe Brisbane need to rip everything up and start again despite the depths to which they have plummeted.
“When you walk into a club, everyone aligns initially, but coaches will frequently come under fire. Because eventually the change room decides they simply can’t do what the coach wants. Or they’re not prepared to listen to him any more. Or they’re off him, all those sorts of different things. But they are the easy options,” said Maguire, who is off contract at the end of the 2027 season.
“The main reason coaches get moved on is because the club is trying to find another starting point. Whether it’s right or wrong, they want a reset. Many of this Broncos playing group have been established here for quite a long time and many have ridden through more seasons of bust than boom.
“The club hadn’t been able to win a competition for almost two decades. And they’d moved on multiple coaches through that period. So, you have to ask – how did those coaching resets go for the club over those two decades?”
Fresh from his State of Origin series victory with the Blues, Maguire’s tough love and intensity was exactly what Brisbane went looking for when they parted ways with Walters following a 12th-placed finish in 2024.
“I have full respect for the people that came before me. I’ve been in Kevvy’s shoes.”
Michael Maguire
Success came so quickly, he said, that players might have got ahead of themselves and believed their own hype.
“Maybe winning a comp a lot earlier than we expected led us down the path of papering over the cracks in the joint,” he said.
“The excitement and the outstanding achievement of the Broncos winning their first premiership in 19 years probably led the playing group to become a little too convinced that they were unbeatable.
“They had also climbed the mountain. And now had to decide if they could do it again. And that premiership arguably happened before we had the opportunity to lay the solid foundations of what it takes to actually maintain sustainable success.”
The World Club Challenge, in which the Broncos were humbled by Hull KR, was an early indication of the problems that lay ahead.
The English champions shot to a 30-4 lead and held off a Brisbane fightback to win by six points.
Maguire said it had been just assumed that Brisbane would be a premiership contender again but admitted they needed to evolve their game.
“People looked at our squad and said, it’s definitely going to happen,” he said. “But we now have to go back to the 2025 well and then add something more. Because now everyone else in the competition is at a different level, primarily because they saw what we had achieved.
“The World Club Challenge game gave me an indicator that we were in trouble. That was a real wake-up call, and the alarm bells were ringing for the coaching staff. You can’t take any shortcuts now in today’s game. It’s too physical, it’s too demanding. And you have to keep building on your mental character.”
Significantly, Maguire raised Walters’ name in poring over a sophomore season to forget.
There has been sensitivity from Maguire and others at the Broncos about the former Brisbane coach, eager not to provoke Walters’ vocal former teammates, whose resentment over his exit remains.
Maguire is now contending with some of the same issues Walters faced and which ultimately cost him his job – a team with a soft underbelly with players drifting in and out of games.
“I have full respect for the people that came before me. I’ve been in Kevvy’s shoes and sometimes it’s just about the timing of your opportunities,” he said.
“There’s a lot of heartache when you’re going through change at your club. It can take a long time. It doesn’t just happen overnight. It can take many years to create meaningful change that sticks.
“I believe this club can take itself back to a really good place. Because at the moment, it’s not where it should be. For many reasons. But it’s going to take every player, every staff member, to give everything they did last year, and then add a whole lot more.”
Unwilling to use Brisbane’s injury toll as an excuse, Maguire cited their pattern of mowing teams down in the second half last year, inspired by Walsh, in picking over what went awry.
Among the stunning comebacks was an epic qualifying final win from 16 points behind against Canberra and another showstopper from 10 down in the grand final against Melbourne.
“We created this false sense of security in the knowledge we would always get there in the end. But you can only get away with winning after chasing down a big score for so long,” Maguire said.
“That’s not a strategy for sustained success. It’ll eventually bite you on the backside and your luck will run out even quicker than the clock winds down.”
He added, tongue in cheek: “Eventually, you have to try the unusual approach of actually attempting to win both halves of footy.”
Impatient in attack, Brisbane have struggled to score points even when they have started games with enthusiasm and then have often disintegrated in defence.
The nadir came last Saturday night in a 40-6 thrashing by the New Zealand Warriors, after which Maguire declared “we need to have a good hard look at ourselves” and commentators slammed Brisbane’s attitude.
It was the Broncos’ 12th defeat in 13 matches – a staggering record for reigning champions – and with bottom-placed St George Illawarra finishing fast kept alive the possibility that they could drop all the way from first to last.
Amid the wreckage, Maguire singled out several performances to build on. One was in round eight against Canterbury when Haas, Walsh and Test forward Pat Carrigan were out injured and retiring captain Adam Reynolds led them to a stirring victory.
Another, unsurprisingly, was a round-20 upset against Penrith, the outlier in their horror run over the past few months.
They still have three games left this year – the first of them on Friday night against the Raiders in Canberra. They are way out of the finals race, but the pressure will only escalate if they keep losing.
“If you look at the Canterbury game and the Penrith game, the boys fought like there was no tomorrow. The early season win against the Dolphins showed the same
qualities,” Maguire said.
“All games that showed that mindset, intent and personality are essential elements and that’s got to be true for everyone in the organisation. So then, you can look at us and say, ‘That’s a Broncos performance’.
“We’re not back at that stage just yet, but we will be.”
Chris Barrett is a senior sports reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former South-East Asia correspondent for the Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.