Broncos Shmonkos - why we bust Brisbane at altitude. Plus: the day Jonesy dropped a Raiders prop
Yep - Broncos Shmonkos. They've left their halfback and prop behind and will face desperate Raiders seeing out two club legends. Brisbane? Welcome to high altitude hell.
Since the days when Allan Langer and Wally Lewis would travel to Seiffert Oval and freeze their tropical bollocks off, the Brisbane Broncs have never enjoyed travelling to Canberra, Queanbeyan or anywhere, really, in the high altitude lands of these our Monaro ranges.
As Hunter S. Thompson once said of the rumour that in the days after 9/11 gangs of Jews were roaming the streets of Aspen beating up on A-rabs, “Gadzooks, there’s something fishy with this story - Jewish people can’t live at this altitude.”
And the flat-landers from the north don’t like it up them on a Saturday night in a Genuine Monaro Winter, there’s been genuine fear in their eyes at the encroaching frost.
Granted, these Broncos are so hot right now and have a spunky-eyed boy in Reece Walsh who’ll flay you given half the chance, the kid’s like a baby Billy Slater.
But there’s an error in the boy, indeed there is a half-dozen. He’s like Tyrell Sloan at the Dragons and Xavier Savage may have been at the Raiders had Ricky Stuart not declared that Savage’s development and confidence would be better served by making those mistakes in the reserves and thus out of the glow of traditional, social and anti-social media.
So, we attack their strengths and when Walsh makes his inevitable errors we profit and punish.
Again, sure, he’s an outlier, Bam Bam, and he has some mates in that Broncos cadre notably Kotoni Staggs, Herbie Farnworth, Selwyn Cobbo and Ezra Mam, they’re a fun-running quintet. And the Broncos, appear, for mine, five weeks out, the ‘logical’ choice to join Penrith Panthers in the Great Denouement on Sunday October 1.
But rugby league isn’t logical. Brisbane didn’t include Adam Reynolds or Patrick Carrigan in their match-day lineup, and thus their combinations will be lesser. The new halfback Jock Madden isn’t going to do more than shift pill to Mam and Walsh, so up and bash him, too, even a tad late, I sense a side-hustle for Hudson Young.
Meanwhile we welcome back Seb Kris and Jack Wighton in Wighton’s and Jarrod Croker’s last round game at the old stadium in Bruce and, friend, if you think their team-mates won’t be bang up for it then … that’s what you think, and good luck to you, you may be right, dashed hard this future-telling caper, particularly when it’s about these our Canberra Raiders you’d get more consistent rent from Chopper Read in remand at Pentridge.
Anyway. We hold the ball, kick long for the corners and chase like devil dogs - and bash Cobbo and Walsh into bits when we get there - then tackle like thick-necked goons and run our big units directly at their big units - Payne Haas with 40 tackles is less effective than Payne Haas with 20 tackles - get the rub of the green from referees and bunker, and then, brother, sister, mother, lover, we’re as good a chance as the Eels of knocking off the Broncs.
Believe it.
Up the Milk.
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For the paid subscribers, bless you and all who sail in your, follows is a yarn about a run-in my mate Jonesy had with a giant Maroons prop outside the Raiders Club in Mawson.
One evening at the Raiders Club in Mawson in 1990, I was with my mate Jonesy who was being taunted by a group of young Raiders players, including a giant young prop.
Jonesy had used the expression “I’ve drunk a hundred beers” and this bloke, being a 20-year-old tool on the piss and surrounded by 20-year-old tools on the piss, decided he would take Jonesy literally and taunt him for it. Goad him.
Because … I dunno. It was fun, presumably.
The club would later describe old mate as “homesick”. Rockhampton is a fine town, for sure. But he was just a tool on the piss.
For some reason, and I wouldn’t do it now, I joined in the ‘discussion’ and opined that the “hundred beers” thing was a figure of speech and that Jonesy hadn’t actually consumed that many beers. So giant prop bit me on the ear and shook his head quite hard.
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