Michael Maguire has claimed the last and sweetest laugh in a season-long duel with extremely vocal critics who didn’t believe he was leading the Broncos in the right direction – including some Brisbane legends.
Brisbane dropped to 5–7 just before the State of Origin period mid-season, and many were questioning whether “Madge,” who’d just guided New South Wales to a series victory in 2024, was the man for the club job.
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Things only got worse when media reports suggested some Broncos players had struggled to adapt to Maguire’s famously hard regime and were complaining to higher-ups about how tough trainings were. Pundits began to suggest Madge had burned his star-studded team out early, though that evidently wasn’t the case as they marched on to the 2025 premiership.
And minutes after the win, Madge claimed the best victory of all – if you forget, for a moment, that he just took the Broncos back to the top of the NRL for the first time in 19 years – with a pitch-perfect crack back.
“Blah, blah, blah,” was the premiership-winning coach’s response.
He continued: “It’s embarrassing people talk about it,” referring to claims he had overworked his roster. “It takes time. You can’t just turn up and think they are going to be grand finalists. You’ve got to put them through all sorts of things to be able to teach them.
“I had belief with this group when I first walked in. You could hear and feel what they wanted… the hunger was in the belly.”
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What was particularly interesting was that many of the advocates for Maguire to be sacked had been suggesting Kevin Walters be returned to the top job at Red Hill, including Broncos old boys like Gordon Tallis; they had argued that Walters had guided Brisbane to a grand final and could have even done one better if given the chance.
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Magurie, who won the 2014 title with the South Sydney Rabbitohs (and ended a 43-year premiership drought in the process), admitted he never really worried too much about the noise after being “questioned all my life.”
“The journeys, the places I’ve been at, these guys bought into what I’ve seen work,” he said. “They haven’t flinched, they didn’t go away from it. They stayed the course, and now they’re sitting here off the back of all the work they’ve done; a credit to them.”
“I just chase moments like this. I like taking on a challenge. They’re all different in their own way,” he added.
“This is very special, to come to a state that they live and breathe rugby league every single day.”
