The Broncos Real Failures are Right on the Jerseys

The Broncos Real Failures are Right on the Jerseys

by Joseph Murphy

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As a long-suffering broncos dribbler, I’ve spent the last few years wondering what went wrong. I tried blaming Darius Boyd and that didn’t work, maybe then it was Seibold and his long list of failures like missing out on Sam Walker or literally anything else he did. Blaming Milford was fun for a while but now it’s just sad seeing the man who was the future of the club develop full blown aphantasia, and bring down the club with him.

While blaming Kevvie has been the flavour of the month, and has some merit (see for example losing Reece Walsh), the real reason for the broncos being seconds away from a grand final to weeks away from a second consecutive spoon can be found right on the jersey, it’s all to do with the company making them. 

The last great broncos season was, of course, 2015 where the team was one Michael Morgan all-time flick pass away from the title (this is a biased study that refuses to blame Ben Hunt). That year was the last year the broncos wore jerseys made by Nike, which included this absolute work of art for heritage round.

Brisbane-Broncos-Heritage-Jersey-2015

 

This jersey is absolute rugby league beauty. The return to the classic stripe design of the broncos foundation jersey, the blast of yellow, rugby league’s most underused colour, and, most of all the collar. Reports from opposition players say that Adam Blair was the most intimidating man on the planet when trucking nut in a collar.

The greatest broncos memories of my life occurred in a Nike jersey. The 2000 and 2006 premierships, Lockyer dominating game after game, Karmichael Hunt returning kicks at full sprint, Ben Hunt running 40 metres through the middle of the Roosters pack to score a try under the posts in golden point. Nike, Nike, Nike. All of the greatest moments in sporting history have been performed in Nike gear. Tiger, Lebron, Kobe, Lockyer – elite company. So where did it all go wrong?

In 2016 the broncos announced their new jersey sponsor would be ISC. The downward slide had begun.  Without the swoosh on their chest, the broncos had a lack of inspiration and turned to complete betas. Some might argue that the broncos still made the top 4 in 2016 but, in response, I ask those people if they can remember a single game from 2016. It’s impossible to conjure an image of that season because the jerseys sucked. The broncos played in ISC jerseys from 2016 to 2020 and it was a wall-to-wall nightmare of terrible jerseys and shit results.

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You ask what a footballer plays for and they’ll tell you “the jersey”. Well that doesn’t happen when they’re wearing ISC. It’s no coincidence that Darius Boyd, who played his best years in a broncos Nike jersey, suddenly forgot how to defend when he had to pull on an inferior cloth.

In 2021 things started looking up when the broncos returned to brand recognition with their sponsorship by Asics. Only to realise they shared the same sponsor as the wallabies. The wallabies are another case study for jersey related decline. Already reeling from their switch from cotton to bogan silk, the wallabies descended from canterbury jerseys to KooGa and achieved nothing in the process. Of course, outliers to this rule exist. The storm have had shitthouse jerseys for as long as anyone can remember but still dominated the league the last two decades. 

The Broncos partnership with Asics runs until the end of the 2022 season. This dribbler is crying out for the Broncos to return to their former glory and cover themselves in the swooshes of old. Because if that’s not the case, it means we just suck, and that’s not something this dribbler can accept.

 

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