Broncos coach Kevin Walters was thoroughly disappointed with his side’s 50-12 loss to the Storm, but still believes he is the man to take the club forward into 2025 and beyond.
The Broncos capped a disappointing season with a thrashing at the hands of title favourites the Storm, which shows the gulf between last year’s grand finalists and the current elite NRL sides.
“Not really, it’s just been a tough year, a disappointing year for everyone involved in the club,” Walters said when asked to sum up his emotions.
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“Yeah, I just need some time now to fix the place up.”
After calling on his players to show pride in the jersey ahead of their final game, Walters was less than impressed with what they dished up.
“No, I didn’t, I don’t think it was up to standards no,” Walters said.
“That’s what the next two or three days will be about over the weekend and into the review,” Walters said.
“Find out, talk to the players, talk to the other coaches. I’ve got some opinions myself, but I’ll just keep my emotions in check just at the moment and we’ll get through the weekend and get our review started on Monday.”
However, Walters denied he needs to overhaul his playing roster to get back to the pinnacle of the competition.
“We’ve got enough talent here,” Walters said.
“We had five guys, five of our starters. We had four million dollars sitting on the sidelines tonight.
“I’m not sure if anyone realised that, but that’s not, that’s one, you know, we need to be better as a group and as a club than what we were tonight.
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“So that’s what the next week is about, finding, getting some reasons, some answers, and then putting that into practice for next year.”
Walters conceded defence is the main area the Broncos need to improve this off-season after conceding over 600 points for just the third time in their history.
“Yeah, well, again, that’s something that we’ll work out in, you know,” Walters said.
“Yeah, it’s just that hasn’t been there for most of the year, really.
“Two or three games where we’ve defended well. The Cowboys game here early, we’d kept them to 12.
“There wouldn’t be too many that we kept under our projected figure for the season, so it’s definitely an area where we’re going to put a lot of work into.
“We know we’ve got the talent, and talent comes through with the attack, but it’s the mindset with defence where we need to get a whole lot better, and that’ll be our first port of call.”
After going within a whisker of a drought-breaking title last year, Walters conceded his side had gone backwards this year.
“Yeah, we took a lot of steps back this year, didn’t we,” Walters said.
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“Yeah, I’m just extremely disappointed. I feel for all our fans and our sponsors and everyone involved in the club.
“It’s not acceptable what happened this year, but we’ll do a full review and get some positive answers and then start working on them.”
While careful not to use it as an excuse Walters believes injuries played a huge part in his side’s struggles in the second half of the year.
“Well, I thought our start, you know, was given… heading to Vegas, that was a big assignment for everyone involved,” Walters said.
“Coming back, we were sitting fourth or fifth into Origin and then Origin sort of hit us, which it always does in a club like ours, but Adam wasn’t part of that.
“He was injured this year. There’s another few guys that were injured which really ate into our depth. At one stage there I couldn’t name 20 players.
“For Origin 3 against the Dragons we had up to 14 players unavailable. But they’re reasons.
“We’ve got to go a lot deeper than that to find out, you know, particularly around our defence.
“It’s just not good enough and out there tonight some of those tries are just not anywhere near NRL standard, not even in Queensland Cup.”
Walters believes the key to turning the club around is getting the pride back in the players to represent the club and the city of Brisbane.
“Yeah, well that’s exactly right and that’s what the next, you know, six to twelve, eighteen weeks are about is reconnecting that affinity with the club and the pride that you need to have when you’re wearing the jersey,” Walters said.
“Regardless of who’s in, who’s out, yeah, that’s part of everyone’s role. You know, everyone’s job is to fix that up and we’ll do that in the pre-season. We’ll get a longer pre-season which is going to be beneficial for us certainly.”
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However, Walters denied he had lost the Broncos playing group and was backed up by his captain Adam Reynolds.
“No, 100%,” Walters said when asked if he had lost the players trust.
“That’s right, we all trust in Kev,” Reynolds interjected.
“It’s on us players, we weren’t good enough. We’re going to be honest and put our hands up and say that we weren’t good enough.
“I think the coaches have done a fantastic job in prepping this week in, week out. I’ve never seen passion like what Kevvie drives through the week.
“That’s coming from a lot of places as well, so that’s on us players, you know, we need to have a good hard look at ourselves, go our way, come back and work hard.”
Walters is adamant he has the players on his books to turn the club’s fortunes around.
“Yeah, I don’t believe we need to,” Walters said.
“I honestly believe that the talent is inside the building. We’ve just got to get that talent all working together in the right direction.
“We’ve shown we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.”
Walters conceded he needs to improve some areas of his coaching, before the emotions of the night got the better of him.
“Look, I’m four years into my NRL coaching career, so everyone can get better,” Walters said.
“Me personally, again, that’ll come up in the review.
“Right now. You know, I feel like, I just, yeah, too emotional, mate, to make any comment.”
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