The Brisbane Broncos registered Tonie Carroll on Monday with the NRL and have named him on an extended five man bench for this weekend match against the New Zealand Warriors.
No, I’m serious!
The Broncos are on a bad losing streak and are out of the top 8 after a few months of terrible football, and how else would you turn that around than by calling on a retired player who’s legs were gone two years ago?
This is the type of stupid move you would expect from a poorly run Super League club, a move forced by panic and by a coach who doesn’t really have any answers.
Broncos coach Ivan Henjak got off to a pretty good start to his career after taking over from Wayne Bennett but its been downhill since. It all come to a head on the weekend when a poor Parramatta side beat the Broncos and after the game Henjak attacked New South Wales coach Craig Bellemy for playing Peter Wallace in Origin two.
Of course, the Broncos played Wallace, who apparently has broken ribs, against Parramatta so his criticism was very strange.
At the end of the day a team with Lockyer, Folau, Wallace, Hodges, Thaiday, Hunt and the like are out of the top 8, and that has to fall on someones shoulders.
I said when he was signed that I felt Ivan Henjak was a quick fix for the Broncos, someone who they would throw the coaching job too until they got a really top class coach they could cement at the clubs for an extended stay.
After the good start to the season, Henjak’s stock rose, although the word out of Brisbane even at that time was that the club wanted Darren Lockyer to move into the coaching role when he retired.
Maybe now we are seeing why that feeling was there.
There Broncos have so much talent and a massive junior base to draw from. To go out and plead with a retired player to come out of retirement and pull on the boots this weekend is a disgrace!
I have always been a big fan of Tonie Carroll, but he retired for a reason. He was old, the game had passed him by and he was just as much of a passenger as anyone else in the side when he decided to hang up his boots.
My question is, how he he expected to come in and fix things? What quality does he possess that Ivan Henjak feels he must have in the side?
It can’t be experience, they Broncos have plenty of that. Its not speed or mobility, and it sure as hell is not fitness. So what is he being brought back for?
Panic.
