The second Broncos-Dolphins showdown in NRL history felt almost as eventful the first, and ended with another close win for Brisbane. As if in sympathy with the Ashes, this was also the first Broncos home game held at the Gabba, the 44^th ground that Wayne Bennett has ever coached at. The Woolloongabba skyline was framing a rugby league game, the AFL markings were clearly present on the ground, and the optical distortion of a NRL field contained in the enormous cricket oval may have explained why Adam Reynolds had a spotty kicking evening.

The Phins had a point to prove after losing to Brisbane the first time around, as well as on the back of their rocks-and-diamond game against Parra, who had almost hit the half century, but also lost the second stanza thanks to a superb Hammer double. On the other side of the Steeden, the Broncos had lost another Queensland Derby against Gold Coast a week earlier, were missing Reece Walsh’s plosive power in attack (Tristan Sailor was stepping in at fullback) and needed to match Penrith’s win over Melbourne the night before to remain in contention.

Despite those high stakes, however, this was a game that subsisted more on sublime individual plays more than a sustained flow from either side. The Hammer continued to make a case for himself as the Dolphins’ surprise marquee player, Te Whare cemented himself as the red and white’s first cult hero, and JMK proved how far he’s evolved beyond what he seemed capable of at the Bulldogs, while Farnworth started the second quarter with a pair of almost identical tries, and Cobbo closed things out by completing his best hat trick to date.

Jesse Bromwich took the first run of the night, followed by brother Kenny, and then Felise Kaufusi, before Adam Reynolds and Pat Carrigan spearheaded a pack to repel Ray Stone at the thirty. Jeremy Marshall-King bounced back with eight dummy half metres, bringing Sean O’Sullivan to the forty for his first kick. Brisbane did better with position, from a Selwyn Cobbo return to the brink of the red zone, to a Kotoni Staggs offload on his first carry, to a Reynolds boot just inside Broncos territory, but this quickly give way to the visitors’ first consolidation.

It started with Kodi Nikorima winning the first penalty of the game off a swinging arm from Brendan Piakura, and was galvanised by the first sublime Dolphins charge of the night, from Valynce Te Whare, who tapped the footy at the thirty, trampled straight over Herbie Farnworth and was almost at the Brisbane forty by the time that Kobe Hetherington downed him with a desperate ankle tap. In doing so, he guaranteed his men a full set in opposition territory, which became a full set in the thirty after Kenny had a very late offload on the turf.

This was a risky enough play for Billy Walters to intervene, only to knock it on, and two tackles later the men from Redcliffe seemed to have scored seamlessly on their first left sweep of the night. JMK got them rolling, while O’Sullivan and Nikorima built on decoy runs from Stone and Connelly Lemuelu for the pair of cut-out passes that provided Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow with the space he needed to dummy, shape for Tesi Niu on his outside, swerve back inside Cobbo, dance away from a Staggs ankle tap, and twist out of Brisbane contact by the time he crossed.

Yet this dramatic opening Dolphins sequence only intensified further when the try was called back for a Lemuelu-Reynolds obstruction, an abrupt enough shift in fortune for the Broncos to now absorb the visitors’ consolidation as their own. Tristan Sailor laid the platform with a bomb that trapped Niu in the ten, right in the corner, as Brisbane proceeded to keep the red and white in their own thirty for most of the subsequent set. As a last resort, Te Whare tried to reprise his mad dash down the right side, but only exhausted the last residues of that run.

This time around, Corey Oates was waiting to come in low, heave him off the ground, and dump him on his back. With Lemuelu pinged for a hand in the ruck, the contributors to the Dolphins’ near-try were devolving across the park, so it felt poetic when Cobbo built on the best sweep of the night to upstage Te Whare’s right side raid once and for all. Reyno started the magic with a muscular pass out to Sailor, who did well to take it low, and then shift it out to Cobbo, who tucked it under the right arm, got outside Niu, and smashed across untouched.

Selwyn was now coasting ahead (12) of Farnworth, Staggs and Ezra Mam (8) for most tries of the Brisbane season, a stat that somewhat eclipsed Reyno’s kick, which sailed the Steeden just beyond the left post. True to the sudden shifts of these first ten minutes, however, the Dolphins ground in to contain a sequence of hard runs on the Brisbane restart, tempting Walters into a wobbly 40/20 attempt that only cleared the opposition forty. Just like that, the crosstown rivals had their best field position since the Hammer’s putdown was called back.

A Haas error ushered in one of the Dolphins’ first real side-to-side sequences, as Katoa popped a harbour bridge ball out to Isaako on the right, before they parlayed that initiative back to the left, where Niu set his eyes on the corner, banged into Staggs, and found four more Broncos waiting to drag him into touch. True to the to-and-fro spirit of this Brisbane derby, Farnworth came close to busting his way through the line on tackle two of the restart, before Haas made up for his ruck error with the most damaging run of the game so far a play later.

All that set up Reynolds’ closest kick so far too, just outside the Dolphins’ thirty, and yet while Cobbo might have climbed a metre and a half above Niu to collect it, he couldn’t maintain possession against the pile of Redcliffe bodies that slammed into him on the chase. O’Sullivan tried to regain the red and white momentum by kicking before the last, from his own forty, and came up with a beautifully weighted bomb that landed five metres out from the try line, meaning not even a committed Cobbo return was enough to bring it very far beyond the ten.

What looked likely to be a challenging set for the Broncos abruptly transformed, however, when O’Sullivan copped a fairly light penalty for a slow peel, and JMK was penalised a moment later too. Walters tapped quickly, went chest to chest with Jesse Bromwich, and then trampled over him, clearing up space for Reynolds to set up a left side play for Oates, who shrugged off a couple of tackles, and in turn laid the platform for Farnworth to ferry the footy eight metres further, to the brink of the chalk, in Brisbane’s most methodical advance so far.

Walters capped it off by getting his own grubber back off a failed Dolphins trap-and-scrap, as Brisbane took one close-range charge after another, until Sailor grubbered into the right corner, where Staggs got fingers to it a millisecond before the Hammer, turning what initially looked like a Dolphins dropout into an extra tackle for the visitors – an apt outcome, since a Staggs knock-on had been missed by the refs earlier in the count. Once again, Brisbane had failed to take advantage of their position, in their best chance for a try since Cobbo’s opener.

The pendulum didn’t swing back towards the visitors as abruptly as it had earlier in the first quarter, as a precarious period now ensued for Nikorima, who only just reined in an O’Sullivan ball, which he juggled from left to right palm like a hot potato, and then copped huge contact on the ground from Carrigan, forcing him to parlay a near cough-up into a messy offload out the back to big Kenny. Worse, Kaufusi left the park for an HIA sustained in a Haas tackle, and wouldn’t return, bringing Aitken into the back row for his first stint off the bench this season.

Katoa tried to resume the Dolphins’ flow with a decent enough bomb, but while it took Cobbo off balance, the star backliner still managed to collect it clean as the Hammer piled on top, before providing his men a strong run on play two to get them out of the red. Farnworth couldn’t make much more headway in the face of Kenny Bromwich, so it was Hetherington who ended up shifting the balance for Brisbane – by adamantly insisting that Reynolds send a challenge upstairs to prove that his lost ball had actually been an illegal strip from Aitken.

In real time this didn’t look very promising, and even in slow motion it appeared that the ex-Warrior had raked at Hetherington’s arm rather than the footy, but the call came down as strip, and so Haas got a chance to add more metres to his burgeoning tally, inspiring both Walters, and then himself into a pair of deft dummy-and-runs, adding a pivot off the left boot on his charge for good measure. Again, Brisbane seemed to be accelerating, and again they deflated, as Mam was held up on the last and Staggs went to ground to avoid an obstruction.

In response, Aitken dodged away from a couple of tackles on the right, but Brisbane closed the gap in time, before Oates came in low and hard to force a knock-on from Katoa. The scrum ushered in the most dominant period of the game for the hosts, in the form of two almost identical Farnworth tries. Reynolds provided a preview of things to come with a double pump to clear up space for Herbie early in this next count, and while the Dolphins survived now, they copped their biggest defensive challenge when Ray Stone conceded six again in the ten.

From there, Reyno shifted the footy out to Farnworth once more, this time through Mam, and the British export concluded the sweep by busting through an Isaako shot and defying Te Whare in three extraordinary stages. First, he maintained possession when the opposing backliner slammed into his ball-carrying arm five metres out from the chalk; then, he dragged his tackler in goal without breaking his stride; and finally, he brought Valynce to ground on top of him, and still managed to twist around and get the footy to the grass for his first four. 

It was a stunning vision of what Farnworth will bring to the Dolphins in 2024, putting the Broncos at double digits with a beautiful sideline kick from Reynolds. Brisbane were on 14/14 completions, to the Dolphins’ 7/10, and had made 69-105 tackles when they got stuck into the restart, so it was a big deal when Hetherington coughed up the ball while trying to extricate himself from Aitken on play four. For a moment, he seemed to be considering another challenge, but eventually thought better of it, as the Redcliffe locals hit the twenty.

All they needed was another tackle to mirror Brisbane’s brilliance on the left edge, as a trio of crisp passes from JMK, O’Sullivan and Katoa built space for Nikorima to shape for Hammer. Staggs was heading to the wing, and Cobbo didn’t have time to come off the wing, by the time Kodi pivoted off the left boot, busted through a last-ditch Sailor-Reyno combo, and planted the tip of the Steeden on the turf. It was the first great moment of the night for the Dolphins, as Nikorima went face to face with Hamiso in a victory roar, and Isaako rapidly converted.

Yet with Walters stripping the footy early in the restart, and Haas slamming Nicholls back into his ten midway through the count, the stage was set for the Broncos to hit back in the best possible way – by simply replicating Herbie’s last try. Again, the ball moved through Reyno and Mam, although this time Farnworth disposed of Isaako and Te Whare in a single stride, landing on the ground in the most muscular effort so far, both immediately neutering Nikorima’s effort, and eclipsing another missed kick in a spotty conversion season for Reyno.

Word now came down from the sheds that Kaufusi would not be returning to the park, as Nikorima and Cobbo came together beneath the next high ball, and the Dolphin only narrowly retained possession. Four plays later, Kodi was burning his way up the right edge, but with Aitken putting down his flick pass, the Broncos were sweeping left on play three of the next count – and only on play three, since the timing disintegrated towards the end of the trajectory, when Isaako smashed into Farnworth so that his pass sailed over Oates’ forehead.

The Steeden may have slid off Isaako’s fingers, and the Dolphins might have wasted their challenge attempting to contest it, but this still marked the start of one of the more frustrated periods of the game for Brisbane. With a full set in the twenty, they were unable to make headway on either wing, as Staggs took one of his most aggressive runs up the right only to be contained by the visitors’ left edge, before Palasia took a steadier, and Reyno shifted it once again in the direction of Kotoni, who was kept outside the red line by a hard Niu tackle.

Searching for the play that would break the set open, Reyno now drifted back towards the left, where Mam failed to find Farnworth, so he directed the play to the right one last time – with a crossfield bomb that would have been an assist for Cobbo if he hadn’t weighted it a little too hard. The Dolphins got the next penalty, when a tough Ese’ese run caught Corey Jensen offside, and Brisbane responded with some sterling defence, as Mam put Aitken clean on the grass, and Palasia cleaned up an O’Sullivan dummy and run beside the right padding.

Still, Katoa got his men their first dropout of the night with a crafty grubber that forced Oates to extend his full wingspan to bump it dead with his right palm as Te Whare carved up the park behind him. Reynolds booted one of the highest and shallowest dropouts of his career, launching the footy above the goal posts but only just clearing the twenty, where Stone leaped half a metre above Taupau, and pulled back both hands from the catch as if concerned about risking inadvertent high contact, before stripping the ball as Kapow finally secured it.

Another penalty set for Brisbane ensued, but they could only muster an echo of their earlier and better efforts. Four plays in, Reyno fed it out to Farnworth, but nothing more happened on this edge, while his kick to the right was more promising this time, even if Cobbo failed to clean it up again. Instead, he tapped it back, Haas scooped it up, and fed it on for Staggs to execute a second kick that Mam collected in turn, before flicking it back for O’Sullivan. The Broncos had a fresh set in the ten though, thanks to an escort from the Hammer on Cobbo.

True to the staggered Brisbane momentum of these last ten minutes, their best attacking position of the night ended two plays in, when Katoa slammed into Mam to force a knock-ou out on the left. With 481 to 703 run metres, the Dolphins weren’t doing too badly to be only eight points behind on the board, which made it all the surprising when O’Sullivan followed good post-contacts from Taupau, along with a dummy and near-break from JMK, by grubbering the footy over the sideline, rather than opting for one last bomb before the sheds.

When they returned, the Dolphins had to recover from 11 completions (compared to Brisbane’s 20) and only 38% of possession, and were faced with one of the Broncos’ most dominant periods. Set after set, the hosts drove deep into opposition territory, while keeping Bennett’s men buried within their own end, and yet the red and white not only managed to fight back for position, and prevent a cascade of Brisbane points, but ended up slamming down the next four themselves, in one of the greatest sequences in their club history so far.

The Broncos had the first set back, and made a statement with a series of fast hard runs, including a charge down the middle from Haas, who was the only player on the park with triple-digit metres (127) to his name. The Dolphins summoned some good defensive gestures here, including a three-man pack on Jensen, and a tough individual effort from Nicholls on Haas, but Brisbane gave as good as they got, as Carrigan and Haas combined to prevent Niu bringing his first return very far over the twenty, before Isaako thought better of an offload.

By the time O’Sullivan got boot to ball, he was only thirty-five metres out, while Reyno was well within the Dolphins’ thirty for his second bomb back. For the second time, too, the visitors struggled for position, as Haas drove into Niu once again, now in combination with Jensen, to drag him back beyond the ten, meaning that it was only on tackle four that Nicholls eventually managed to break the red zone. Katoa was the kicker now, but he booted it in the same place as O’Sullivan, as the Broncos flexed and headed for Dolphins territory a third time.

Two now brief reprieves ensued for the Redcliffe locals, and while they didn’t produce much, they were the first distant hints of how the Dolphins would manage to turn this Brisbane onslaught on its head. First, Nicholls surged in with a terrific low tackle to shut down Haas; then, Walters lobbed his second awkward kick out to the left, where Isaako took it on the bounce. For a third time, it looked like the Phins would only notch up thirty-five metres, but with those two minor momentum-shifters behind them, they summoned a galvanising play.

It actually started thirty-five out, where Hammer almost bobbled the ball, and was brought to ground at the end of a left sweep, only to offload at the last second for Niu, who busted through the line, chipped at the thirty, and banged straight into Sailor, who got on his bike to charge downfield and scoop up the Steeden before O’Sullivan could get to it. The visitors were raring for an obstruction, and got the next best thing – Reynolds’ first kick in his forty since the break, another Brisbane glitch that prompted Nikorima into more Dolphins flamboyance.

Building on the speed his men had unleashed up the left edge, Kodi skipped across the park on the return, spied a gap on the right, and flicked it out for Isaako to break the forty. For the first time in this second stanza, the Dolphins were working the footy deep into enemy territory, although the pieces weren’t quite in place yet, as Hammer delivered a superb run up the other side of the park, but found nobody waiting for him when he shaped to offload, before Stone was downed when Jensen executed the classiest low tackle of the whole game.

The Dolphins were poised between chaos and brilliance, and for a moment it looked like all this newfound energy might dissipate when O’Sullivan fed a forward ball to Nicholls late in the count, especially when Haas absorbed all this red and white energy as his own by dragging two defenders over halfway. Walters made eighteen metres off the subsequent dummy half run, and yet Reynolds misjudged another bomb, weighting it hard enough for Niu to take it on the full in goal, and so win his men an extra tackle to refine the flow of their previous set.

For a moment, it looked like it all might be over when O’Sullivan sailed a cut-out that went straight past Niu and over the line. But the Dolphins got one more crack when Sailor offloaded through a Hammer legs tackle to Staggs, and Niu intercepted it, bringing the visitors to their moment of truth. Ese’ese now drifted into the line, fended off Walters, contemplated the trio of Carrigan, Haas and Jensen, bumped off Mam, and finally accepted the tackle from the big men, popping the offload out the back at the very last second for JMK to continue the attack.

Something about Ese’ese’s calm consideration seemed to reset the entire team’s footy cognition, as JMK now shaped right, dodged left, and fed a short pass to O’Sullivan, who worked his way back infield, dummying all the while to keep the Broncos on their toes, before flicking it on to Katoa in turn. The five-eighth now condensed Ese’ese’s drifting, O’Sullivan’s dummying, and JMK’s pivoting, before taking the next tackle, and clearing space for JMK to bring it all together with a right sweep out for O’Sullivan to pop the assist on for Te Whare.

The young backliner is already shaping up to be the Dolphins’ first great cult player, so to see him score a try here would have been rousing enough even if he hadn’t achieved it in a such spectacular manner. For this putdown was eloquent in its ungainliness, the sheer physicality written over each successive stage of it, as Te Whare snuck under a swinging arm from Oates, busted through a Piakura ankle tap, reached out the right hand to fend Farnworth but instead fell into the winger’s right arm, and somehow broke through Jensen’s efforts to pull him back.

By the time Taupau tumbled on top it was all over, and even if Isaako missed the kick, this was still a huge turning-point for the Dolphins, while Isaako himself was still at the top of the table for 2023 premiership points (158), ahead of Val Holmes (152) and Nick Meaney (142). The Broncos might have kept them in their own end on the restart, but the spectacle of Te Whare scoring, and the belief of this last period of resurgence, was enough to propel the visitors towards their next try, and into one of their best back-to-back efforts of the season.

Their next chance came when Tyson Smoothy put down a Taupau offload for his first touch off the bench. They swept right, where Te Whare looked dangerous until Farnworth got him by the leg and Smoothy cleaned it all up. Then, they headed left, where there was nothing doing on the wing, forcing Ese’ese to compensate with a clinical charge deep in the ten. By all accounts, they should have got a fresh set on the kick, which O’Sullivan landed so squarely on Carrigan’s chest that the big lock made not one but two touches before he fumbled it forward.

Nevertheless, the Dolphins didn’t break their stride, working it as hard and fast up the middle as the Broncos had after the break, and making the most of another weird Reynolds bomb – very high, but with no depth on it, and no chase to follow it – by getting Katoa in place for his best boot of the night so far. The Steeden careened a good couple of metres from the outstretched arms of Sailor and Aitken, and took Kenny Bromwich by surprise, meaning he could only extemporise a catch-and-pass for Katoa to flick it on to O’Sullivan for a second kick.

Cobbo took this one in the corner, and yet the contrast between Reynolds’ kick and Katoa’s kick was telling. With Walsh absent, Haas off the park, Carrigan’s numbers down, and Reyno not on song with the boot, Brisbane needed one of their key playmakers to step up – and for a moment it looked like it might be Reynolds himself, since his next bomb was a beauty, spinning so wildly that no sooner had Nikorima clutched it into his chest than he spilled it back along the ground for Carrigan to scoop up and start Brisbane’s next set in the Dolphins’ ten.

What had to be a turning-point for the Broncos only devolved from there, however, as a series of aimless charges at the chalk ended with Piakura coughing up the footy into a low driving run from Nikorima, who made up for his own knock-on with aplomb. The Dolphins now stole what should have been Brisbane’s consolidation with their best clutch passing of the game, spreading the Steeden to the left of the scrum, where Niu drove it into the line, and flicked it on for an O’Sullivan catch-and-pass to Hammer, who tucked the footy under his arm and ran.

Staggs was around his waist in no time, but this just prompted a superb offload, right on the chalk, to Niu, who scooped it up, and was himself slammed into touch by Carrigan, before managing to lob an even more volatile second phaser back into O’Sullivan, who came to ground beneath Sailor and Cobbo while tempting Xavier Willison into dangerous contact. The visitors had a fresh set, most of it in Broncos territory after Jesse Bromwich dragged a couple of defenders over halfway on tackle two, and were buoyed up by this sublime ball handling.

This ushered in the pinnacle of the Dolphins’ night, culminating with their only lead of the game, their most sustained position of the game, and their most galvanising momentum of the game as well. Bromwich set the stage by following his superb charge midway up the park by wrestling Smoothy and Sailor right to the line, before O’Sullivan provided some eyes-up footy on the left edge, where he realised that there were too many Broncos in the defensive line to make a decent run for it, and so launched a fourth-tackle grubber deep in goal instead.

Presicent that the Phins were expecting him to go short, Reynolds booted the dropout with all his might, but even so Kenny Bromwich was at the red line on tackle two, before Oates came in hard and low to prevent Te Whare cracking the ten at the end of a rapid right sweep on the third. Kerr took a steadier in the middle, and from there the visitors headed right again, where Nikorima mirrored O’Sullivan with an equally dangerous chip, and once again Sailor was the man to take it dead, although this time around Reyno elected to boot a short dropout.

Not only did the footy barely clear the ten metre line, but it sailed higher than almost any kick this year, forcing Isaako to leverage Te Whare’s massive bulk to climb a metre above Farnworth and take it on the full. That gymnastic dexterity was the last ingredient in this red and white consolidation, which gave way to the best two individual efforts of the game, the first of which came two plays later from JMK. Finding himself seven metres out, the ex-Bulldog managed some of the most mercurial handling from dummy half that we’ve seen this season.

First he shaped for the left, while the ball was still hanging a few centimetres above the turf, and then he headed right, before moving to the left once more, and then throwing the biggest dummy of this sequence back in the other direction, meaning Hetherington and Willison were completely flummoxed by the time he split them to down a triumphant try. Isaako added the extras, the Phins were ahead on the board, and it was a real tribute to their tenacity that Brisbane had to mount a serious comeback to secure the competition points by the final siren.

If anything, it looked like the Dolphins would score next too, so staunch was their footy flow now, with Kerr demanding a five-man pack to hold him up on play one of the restart, and Lemuelu garnering the most limber post-contacts of the night – twenty through the middle, as defender after defender cascaded away – before Kenny and Jesse consolidated with some big bopper action as the Brisbane defence finally circled the wagons. Nikorima wasn’t done yet, however, summoning two short side plays that came close to another tryscoring chance.

First, he shifted the Steeden out for Hammer, who was brought to an unceremonious halt by a brutal low shot from Staggs, before he kicked down the same edge, where Staggs again saved the day by scooping up the footy, and flicking it on to Sailor, who in turn spread it further across for Farnworth to cop a big combined shot from Kenny and Aitken that saw him stumble back to the twenty. Staggs now tried to mirror the Phins with a short side play on the same edge, and while he couldn’t best Hammer, he did clear space for more Carrigan metres.

Reynolds’ next bomb was a monster, landing with a nightmare bounce that defied both Nikorima and Smoothy, before Aitken eventually scrambled for it right on the chalk. The main imperative for Brisbane now was to slow down the red and white flow, but it continued largely unabated on the next set. Conversely, the Broncos had energy to burn when they got ball in hand again, but it was unstructured, scattered across individual plays, like a Haas offload, or a Farnworth harbour bridge one-hander to Haas, that didn’t congeal into a solid team effort.

It was clear, then, that the hosts had one of two options – to summon a new cohesion, or else to rely on an individual play so transcendent that it could gather all the energy of this set into itself. Cobbo provided the latter on the last tackle, while also culminating the aborted short side plays of the last few sets, with a display that would be enough to cement him as a Brisbane icon even if he never played another game of football. The first step was receiving the ball on the right edge and getting outside Katoa, as Niu set his sights on containing him.

To Niu’s credit, he did the job here, leaving Selwyn with nowhere to go, but that just propelled the young winger to even greater heights of footy genius, as he chipped straight over Hammer from the short side, and curved round to greet the Steeden as Jesse Bromwich looked on powerless in backplay. O’Sullivan also made a play for it, and had both arms outstretched to receive it, but with the bounce favouring Cobbo, his wingspan became a low tackle, and then slid down to an ankle tap, the Bronco 5 keeping his ball-carrying arm off the turf all the while.

It was easily his greatest try of the year, channelling the spirit of Brisbane that the home team needed in the absence of Walsh’s vision in the backline, and with Reynolds adding the extras, Kevin Walters’ men were in front again. Haas commandeered the restart with a magnificent charge and an offload to Smoothy, who tried to make it third phase play, mistimed the pass, but still managed to recover it after a Hammer touch, before genuinely coughing it up at the end of the set, when Palasia popped it back to him as he was lifted clean off the turf by Kenny.

No sequence encapsulated the Broncos’ stop-and-start momentum tonight better than this one, as Smoothy tried to contain the footy on the ground in vain as Lemuelu poured on top of him. Staggs started cleaning up with a critical tackle on Hammer midway through the set, stalling the Dolphins attack just when it seemed to be building once more. Katoa didn’t help either, with a bomb from forty out that went far too long, leaving Oates without a contest as he laid the platform for Haas to make yet another offload to Staggs, who headed for the right.

While he didn’t make much in the way of metres, he played the ball fast enough for Cobbo to nab twenty on the dummy half run, all of which got Reyno in place for a brilliant bomb that Nikorima somehow collected with Mam up in his face. Katoa now went from booting it at the Brisbane forty to kicking at his own forty, while a determined driving run from Oates got the Broncos over halfway by midway through the next set, only for Niu to collect Reynolds’ next bomb under even clutchier conditions than Nikorima, with four players all jumping up for it.

We were back to a real set-for-set rhythm now, and the stalemate only intensified when play was paused for two HIAs. The first came when Jesse Bromwich swung an arm on Farnworth, who was taken from the park to make way for Willison. No sooner had the hosts got a very marginal penalty off it than Willison’s eagerness from the bench saw him trample over Aitken, who copped a boot in the face, and left to make way for one last Stone stint. About two minutes had now passed without any football, but the game was all over in the very next play.

Haas started by getting the ball to Reynolds, who fired a beautiful cut-out pass, with Carrigan running a hard decoy line, to Staggs, who drifted into the defence and showcased some impeccable timing as he left it late as possible to flick it on to Cobbo at the twenty. From the air, it looked as if the Hammer and Niu must block his way to the chalk, but instead Selwyn turned on the magic once again, running a tightrope marathon along the sideline before bumping off Nikorima five metres out, and using the contact to pivot back infield and score.

Reynolds didn’t get the extras, but he didn’t have to, since this was one of the most rousing finales of the season for Brisbane – proof positive that Cobbo has what it takes to be a genuine rugby league superstar, in a game that will surely come to be seen as pivotal in his evolution in the backline. The Broncos have the bye to reflect on their victory, as well as their inconsistencies, before they take on the Dogs at Belmore on the first weekend of Round 20, while the Phins will be keen for a memorable win when they rock up for Gold Coast next week.