Stand-in Brisbane coach Peter Gentle says the struggling team need to “break some bad habits” if they are to win another NRL match this season.
The Broncos horror show continued in Canberra, giving up a 8-6 lead to crash to a 36-8 defeat, leaving them with just three wins for the season.
The only pain for the Raiders came on the sidelines, with coach Ricky Stuart unable to attend the post-match press conference due to a back problem that also kept him from his usual sideline position.
Gentle has taken over the reins for two weeks while embattled coach Anthony Seibold quarantines after leaving the NRL bubble for family reasons.
The Broncos started strongly, with second-rower Payne Hass leading the charge up the middle as Jesse Arthars and young centre Herbie Farnsworth both scored.
There were no signs of the 30-point blow-out ahead, with Gentle saying he thought his team “were in with a real show”.
He said the second-half collapse was a pattern of their season. They fell away similarly in round five against Manly and round eight against the Warriors after leading at half-time while they looked in line for a win over Cronulla two weeks ago before imploding.
“We’re all hurting – it’s less than ideal what we’re going through but unfortunately we’ve got to break some bad habits there,” Gentle said.
“You tend to come out in the second half and, not wait to get beat, but when things tend to go against you they tend to be compounded.
“Little things are becoming big things, by our own doing, and some of the defence in the second half wasn’t up to NRL standards.”
As well as the absence of Seibold, the Broncos this week lost Tevita Pangai Jnr after he breached the NRL bubble while there’s an investigation into another breach by a group of players.
Gentle didn’t want to blame those outside factors.
“I’m not going to use that as an excuse – we’ve got to own it, we did the wrong thing,” he said.
“We had to come and put a performance and for 40 minutes we did.”
Hooker Jake Turpin will have X-rays on a suspected fractured hand while Hass and Kotoni Staggs were put on report.
Gentle said Seibold would return to the club after next week’s clash with St George Illawarra.
