I decided to take a look back at the first two rounds just to get a better context of the Broncos season.
I thought the Broncos did a terrific job of controlling possession early. They were fortunate Souths bombed a try in the corner, but off that seven tackle set they were able to camp inside the Rabbitohs half for a fair portion in that first half. The forwards laid a good platform and it just allowed their strike players to take full advantage - Kotoni Staggs had his best game in a Broncos jersey and made sure they played from infront getting the better of Burns down that right fringe.
Outside of the forwards who were terrific in the opening quarter, what stood out to me were the playmakers. The Broncos earned 3 goal line drop outs, and they all came off different kickers - Isaako, Turpin and Milford. In 2019, it basically all came down to Milford with Turpin making the odd big play here or there so it was promising to see all these different points of attack.
I think that played a role in Milford's try, where Isaako really dug in that gap between Reynolds and Lowe to get the offload away to Milford. It was great to see Milf mesmerise the defence after all these years and score the type of try he'd score 4-5 years back.
At 8-0 I thought they were close to running in another try, but for whatever reason they decided to take the 2. I'd have to imagine the call came from Carrigan, who ended up playing the first 48 minutes and 75 minutes total. In this instance, I feel it backfired and the lack of faith in Bullemor took it's toll on the side. Bullemor only played 5 minutes, on a bench that featured an outside back and a relief hooker.
Instead Macca drops an offload cold and Souths took advantage of the Broncos weak right hand defence. Brisbane just never seem to number up properly and it usually causes one of the backs to rush in and make life easy for the playmaker. Then moments later, the refs find a knock on against Hopoate and they run a nice scrum play where the Jet does extremely well to get the ball back to Walker. Off the back of a penalty, Souths somehow went into the sheds up by 2.
I thought Seibold made a fantastic adjustment when he brought Farnworth on for McCullough and shifted Staggs to 6. It was important the Broncos scored first and that was a far more potent combination. As it happened, Milf got a quick play the ball, which gave Haas some room to move. He did one of his Andrew Fifita moves where he drew in the defence and Staggs took full advantage to score in the corner. Staggs caused them a couple of headaches down that fringe and it wasn't long before he got his hat-trick off some quick hands from Farnworth and Hopoate. Annesly in the post-match replay showed it shouldn't have been given, which suggests to me somebody at Redfern really took their time to find this one split second image and had a whinge about it, but there was no denying Staggs at that time.
Fatigue started to set in the last 20 and Brisbane could barely get outof their own half. I thought Milford really needed to work harder to find the sideline and give his forwards a spell but he couldn't get the job done and in one instance just turned the ball over. I thought Milford had a genuine solid game capped off by that great try but he really needed to step up there. There was one passage where Brisbane finally had the ball in Souths half and they either needed a repeat set or needed Souths to work it off their line. Instead of putting a kick through for his chasers, Milford just dabs a kick through the centre of the field and the Souths chaser swallowed it and got them off to a strong start.
Fortunately for the Broncos they managed to hold on, it looked like Souths were about to score off a Knight offload, but Arthars jammed in on Walker and his pass went to ground. If Arthars didn't come in, Souths had a 3 on 1 overlap so it was a fair effort from the Titans recruit.
If the competition had have continued the Broncos would have been without Oates and Croft for the Gold Coast. Oates busted his ribs after Liam Knight laid him out and Croft came off the worse for a mad scramble for the ball. I'd imagine Coates and Dearden would have come in and the side would have largely remained the same.
