Hastings Boys' high belt out Warriors anthem to support captain and school old boy, Tohu Harris. Video / Hastings Boys' High School
Michael Burgess in Brisbane
The Warriors will face one of the biggest challenges in their history tonight.
The club has featured in some massive occasions over the years, most notably the 2002 and 2011 NRL grand finals against the Roosters and Sea Eagles respectively.
There have also been four other preliminary finals, from the breakthrough match against Cronulla in 2002, to clashes with Penrith (Sydney, 2003) and Manly (Sydney, 2008), along with the unforgettable conquest of the Storm on their home turf in 2011.
They were all landmark moments, and there have been others, notably the 2008 trip to Melbourne in the first week of the finals, where the eighth-placed Warriors pulled off what is still regarded as the greatest upset in playoff history.
But it’s hard to imagine a greater cauldron than what is coming at Suncorp Stadium, or a match more weighted with emotion than this.
Queensland boast the most fanatical league followers in Australia, while the Broncos have the biggest support of any club. Brisbane is awash with league fever, after their best season in years.
The Courier Mail had 11 pages devoted to coverage of the match on Friday, while the television and radio bulletins are full of Broncos talk. Around the city there are banners everywhere you look – with Broncos players displayed alongside a tagline “The heart of Brisbane”.
Locals sense a return to the glory days, after a long, long premiership drought by their standards. The Broncos were founded in 1988 and five years later had claimed their first title.
They won four more in quick succession (1993, 1997, 1998 and 2000) – the winningest club of that decade – before Wayne Bennett banked another one in 2006. But since then the cabinet has been empty, while clubs like the Sea Eagles, Roosters, Storm and Penrith have come to prominence.
That period has hit hard here, for league diehards used to the ultimate success. The Broncos have come close – beaten in three preliminary finals (2009, 2011 and 2017) – along with the agonising golden-point grand final defeat to the North Queensland Cowboys in 2015.
All up they have reached the playoffs 11 times since that 2006 triumph. Given their history, it’s been 17 years of hurt, with the nadir coming in 2020 when they finished bottom of the NRL ladder for the first time. The following year they were 14th– with only seven wins – and last season they missed the finals again.
But the good times are back – and this year has equalled the best regular season in their history, with 18 victories.
That has bred tremendous expectation. Jerseys have been flying out the door at retailers around the city and the Broncos’ club shop was doing a brisk trade when the Herald visited on Friday. Across the road, at the Broncos leagues club, the replica trophies of their six previous premierships are on display, with space allocated for a seventh.
Warriors Rocco Berry, Dallin Watene-Zelezniak and Wayde Egan celebrate a try. Photo / Photosport
Tonight, the Warriors will be deep in enemy territory. Though there will be a healthy contingent of New Zealand support – perhaps up to 10,000 fans – they will be outnumbered by more than 40,000 wearing purple and yellow. They will bring a barrage of noise rarely faced by a Warriors team, along with the inevitable pressure on the officials.
On the plus side, the Warriors have plenty of big-match experience. Six of their 17 have featured in a grand final (compared to only two Broncos), while the journey of the last fortnight has been invaluable for the group, in terms of adjusting to finals intensity.
But tonight will be a new level. The Warriors will need to maintain clear heads, while matching or exceeding the performance standards in the 40-10 win over Newcastle last weekend.
Externally, there’s a sense this game has come a season or two early for this Warriors team, with more still to come in the Andrew Webster era. But within the team there is a quiet confidence, a belief they can do something remarkable ahead of schedule.
The Broncos are massive favourites but that could help the Warriors, as all the pressure and expectation will be on the home side. The Queensland capital is braced for a massive sporting celebration this weekend – with the Brisbane Lions also playing in the AFL preliminary final on Saturday – but the Warriors will do everything they can to crash the party here.
Michael Burgess has been a sports journalist since 2005, winning several national awards and covering Olympics, Fifa World Cups and America’s Cup campaigns. He has also reported on the Warriors and NRL for more than a decade
