The Roosters were facing one of their most dramatic transition periods in the modern era when they hosted Brisbane for the first Australian match of the 2025 season, following the double-header opener in Vegas. Jared Waerea-Hargreaves had departed for Super League, Joey Manu was lacing the boots for Japanese Rugby Union, Luke Keary had retired and Sam Walker was out with an ACL injury until midway through the year, leaving the incongruous and untried combo of Chad Townsend and Sandon Smith to guide them round the park.

That said, the Chooks had a promising name in their arsenal – Robert Toia, a Redcliffe junior, who was hoping to eventually fill the Manu void and who would play a key role in the first of their tries tonight, along with representing Queensland in Origin 1 after only 10 games of NRL. Mark Nawaqanitawase was also a new addition, playing his second game for Sydney, while Victor Radley was moving from an edge back to the middle, although he would only get twelve minutes of play at Allianz before leaving the park for a Category 1 concussion.

On the other side of the Steeden, this marked the beginning of the Michael Maguire era for the Broncos, and Madge’s first club coaching stint since leaving the Tigers in 2022. Prodigal son Ben Hunt was also returning to Brisbane, bringing the unfinished business of the 2015 Grand Final loss to the Cowboys, making for the most experienced halves combo in the comp alongside Adam Reynolds. It was a Brisbane reunion of sorts too for Gehamat Shibasaki, who was starting in Suncorp colours for the first time since late 2019.

Shibasaki, who would go on to score the opening try, was accompanying Deine Mariner in the centres, with Kotoni Staggs out due to a quad injury sustained during the first half of the pre-season trial against the Bulldogs, while Corey Paix, who would put down the second try, was back in NRL for the first time since late 2023. Ezra Mam was serving a nine-game suspension following his drink driving charge, and Pat Carrigan was now commencing alongside Payne Haas as prop, bringing Kobe Hetherington’s heft into the starting lock role.

By the time the final siren rang out Brisbane had their biggest ever win over the Roosters, easily beating their 36-2 record from 1989, and foreshadowing their extraordinary run to the Grand Final. For the Chooks, this was only the fourth time they’d conceded a half century under Trent Robinson, as they failed, time and again, to make the most of the heavy track. Despite blue sky in the afternoon, there had been three torrential downpours just before kickoff and the visitors drew on their subtropical cred to play to the conditions.

Allianz got their first glimpse of Brisbane’s half-century dominance on the opening play, when a mammoth Broncos pack, spearheaded by Haas, almost dragged Lindsay Collins back beneath the uprights, and managed to force an error in the process. The visitors enjoyed two straight sets within the Sydney ten, thanks to a Radley error, although the Inflictor made up for it right away by holding up Jack Gosiewski on the left edge, while Angus Crichton and Marky Mark combined to shut down a Reece Walsh charge on the right.

By the time the Roosters got the ball back two and a half minutes of play had elapsed, and they quickly set up about making up the deficit – first by re-establishing a rhythm of end-to-end footy, then with Collins bouncing back with the first foray over halfway. Crichton added two offloads, Naufahu Whyte made a strong carry on tackle five, a three-man Sydney pack dragged Gosiewski back from the Broncos’ first venture into Roosters territory and James Tedesco did well to to bear the brunt of a big Ben Hunt chase off an Adam Reynolds kick.

Still, it took the nineteen-year-old debutant to produce the piece de la resistance, as Robert Toia, on his first ever touch in the NRL, collected a Townsend pass, broke into space up the right, dummied and pivoted off the right boot to dispose of Hunt, outstripped Walsh for speed, and popped the Steeden out to Dom Young at the Brisbane forty. From there, the ex-Knight defied a Walsh ankle tap at the death and banged off Shibasaki to put down the points, which remained four after Smith’s kick ricocheted off the post.

Given that Collins had turned his back to take the brunt of Haas’ opening charge, and Teddy had absorbed Hunt’s kick return by also facing his own goal line, it felt poetic that Young opted for the same move in the face of Shibasaki’s last-ditch tackle on the chalk – an affirmation of the Roosters’ resilience in the wake of Brisbane’s initial assault on their line. The Chooks knew it too, with Siua Wong following an energetic restart with a monster chase on Walsh, who was grounded before he could do anything dangerous with the football.

This Wong-Walsh smashup ushered in one of the most confident periods of the game for the Roosters, as Collins came in almost as hard on Jordan Riki early in the tackle count – hard enough to reel away from the contact with blood streaming down his cheek. Crichton’s enthusiasm spilled over into an offside penalty but even with a full set down Sydney’s end, the Broncos were unable to make much headway, with Townsend stepping up to contain Walsh as he dashed from left to right before adding his verve to a pack effort against Haas.

The Roosters were just as energetic in attack during the next set – Radley bent the line back on the third, Teddy capitalised on a rapid Connor Watson play-the-ball to shrug off Hetherington on the next tackle, and Townsend booted it over the sideline to give his men time to summon up another rollicking bout of defence. For a moment, a huge Crichton-Cobbo shot seemed likely to curb Brisbane once again, but the tide started to turn when Riki, still smarting from the Collins shot, made a few metres with Crichton round his neck.

With Patty Carrigan similarly garnering some post-contacts through Collins, the stage was set for the two big plays that put the visitors on the front foot once again. First, Haas barged his way over the forty and offloaded to Shibasaki, who shrugged off Young, broke through Radley and cleared the opposition forty by the time he was brought down. Second, Hetherington fumbled a Paix ball, regathered it, darted between Crichton and Collins and looked set to split Teddy and Radley, only to slip as the Roosters’ heads slammed together.

Play paused for two minutes as Radley lay on his back, with what would quickly be deemed a Category 1 head knock, while Collins took the time to wipe the blood off his face too. Blake Steep trotted onto the park, the game resumed with one Brisbane tackle remaining, and the visitors headed left, where Reyno showed it, kicked it, and chased it, but came up short against Teddy collecting it a metre out from the line. The pause in play had given Sydney time to recover but by their next set the Broncos were ready to strut their stuff.

Walsh collected the high ball without a Rooster in sight and so popped it over for Jesse Arthars to start activating the left edge. Shibasaki may have been driven back by Collins, Smith and Whyte on the next play, but a propulsive Haas run, which brought them to halfway by tackle three, was the platform Paix needed for the first of two beautiful try involvements from dummy half. In both cases he looked one way and flicked the footy to the other, and on the second crack he’d end up crossing over himself beside the padding.

For now, he looked right, showed the Steeden right, and even took a big step right, drawing in Townsend to create a three-on-two on the left edge, where Hunt was waiting to receive it and dummy twice to force Wong to commit, thereby leaving space for Arthars to complete Paix’s stellar left edge activation by breaking through a swinging arm from Young and popping it back into Shibasaki as Teddy was floored between them. From there, Shibasaki curved gently around behind the posts to set up Reyno for an easy two from in front.

Toia might have assisted on debut but this was almost as good – Shibasaki scoring in his first appearance for Brisbane since 2019, off the vision of Paix’s first game of NRL since Round 27, 2023. A mere two sets later Hunt glimpsed an opening at marker on tackle two, tempting a second effort from Wong to contain him, and Paix dazzled even more when he was inside the Chooks’ ten. This time it was a subtler move – a subliminal look to the left before he flicked the footy back for Haas to charge towards Watson and the crossbar.

The ex-Knight managed to wrap himself around big Payne’s ankle, but Paix read the play beautifully, edging around to collect the last-ditch offload and score untouched beside the right post. He got low as if expecting a barrage of Sydney defence that never came – there wasn’t a defender in a three-metre radius – and so this was the first sign that the game might truly get away from the Roosters, as Reyno booted through another two, and word came down that Radley would likely miss the big clash against Penrith the next Friday.

Nevertheless, Walsh was a little overconfident three plays into the restart, when he built on a Reyno dummy to execute what would have been the linebreak of the night if he’d flicked it back in to Mariner or Reynolds a little earlier. Instead, he let his footy flow carry him back inside them, and to the brink of the enemy red zone, where he finally lobbed the Steeden back outside to Mariner, but with Tedesco now in place to reach out a palm to deflect the pass, before Mariner found himself offside to grant the Chooks a fresh set from halfway.

If Sydney had received a letoff, though, Brisbane breathed an even bigger sigh of relief when Blake Steep fumbled the play-the-ball on tackle two, setting them up to form the scrum roughly from where Walsh had burst into space – and Walsh had the first run. A Smith error brought them more space, and Hunt finished with a deft chip from the twenty, forcing Young to tap it dead with several Broncos hot on his heels. In only a minute, Brisbane had transitioned from their most frustrating error of the night to the first dropout of the match.

Townsend risked a short boot to the right edge, where Cobbo received it twelve metres out and scurried back in field in the hope of making better headway up the middle. He would have, too, if not for a desperate tackle from Crichton, and yet it only took half the set for Brisbane to score again. It was their simplest try so far, as Carrigan received another nice ball from Paix, held it just long enough to draw in Wong, and thus set up Gosiewski to hit the Steeden at speed for a one-on-one with Townsend he was always going to dominate.

With the touchdown beside the left padding, Reyno had another easy kick, bringing the Broncos to 18-4. Sydney defended hard early in the restart, with Steep expending some frustration in bone-rattler on Gosiewski on tackle two, but Brisbane had found their flow, as Haas delivered his best charge yet, hitting the footy at full velocity, trampling over Whyte at the forty, clearing halfway with ease and offloading out to Shibasaki. Reynolds’ kick was just as good – long, flat and decelerating to the left edge, where it sat up right on the chalk.

To their credit, the Roosters pumped the energy into their set as well, spreading it left on the third for Marky Mark to carve up the sideline, offload for Crichton to collect a few extra metres, and then put his hand up again on the fourth, when he bumped off a couple of defenders to arrive at the Brisbane thirty. By the time he got to the kick, Townsend was only twenty metres out, so it was agonising when a Salesi Foketi kick gifted the Broncs more position, although this turned out to usher in a fairly error-prone period for both teams.

Losing Haas and Hetherington to scheduled breaks probably had something to do with the slight Broncos slump – their next mistake was a slow peel from Xavier Willison who was fresh off the bench and hadn’t properly warmed up yet. In fact, the only points scored during these last ten minutes would be a penalty kick from Reynolds to bring Brisbane to a round twenty as they headed into the sheds, despite the fact that both teams came agonisingly close to scoring in the sets just before the siren rang out over the Allianz grass.

The frustration began with two offloads that quickly gave way to errors and disappointment. First, Crichton attempted to build space for Marky Mark with an offload through Mariner, only to fumble it into the Brisbane backliner and gift the visitors a scrum. Carrigan now stepped up with an extremely late one-handed, no-looker offload to Willison, as a horde of Roosters defenders were rolling him onto the ground, and Reynolds capitalised on it with a superb chip-and-chase that forced Teddy to collect it in goal.

This was a tactically brilliant move, catching the Sydney fullback out of position as he prepared for yet another kick to his right wing, but the dropout went nowhere, as Tupou made the most of his massive wingspan to tap it back to Teddy at the ten. Nevertheless, the Roosters succumbed to another unforced error, this time from Smith, who lost a wide ball backwards, gifting Brisbane the scrum. From here, the Broncos, and then the Chooks, would come close to scoring, creating a strangely unresolved quality as they headed to the sheds.

At the end of the following set, Carrigan made a sterling effort to reprise his short ball assist to Gosiewski, but this time to Willison and on the other side of the park. Scooping up the Steeden with both hands and ferrying it into the line, he popped it on to his fellow forward, drawing in a bolshy Sydney three-man pack, with Teddy’s involvement costing him a rare penalty for finding himself offside in the ten. A little more acceleration and Willison would have crossed, so it was slightly anticlimactic when Reynolds only got two points from it.

From here, the Chooks dominated the rest of the first stanza, giving them some confidence – if not any points – to buoy them up during the break. There were glimpses early in the next set, when Teddy passed it out to Marky Mark to make metres up the left, where he crossed halfway and played the ball fast enough for Townsend to add more to the tally of Smith, who glimpsed an offload before Riki cleaned him up. Penalty notwithstanding, it was clear that if Sydney were going to deliver this stanza, it had to come off Tedesco’s vision.

Sure enough, he competed with Walsh beneath the high ball, and in a one-two-three punch got both hands to it, and then recovered his own tap-back himself, while winning six again in the process, before breaking away from a Cobbo tackle and only succumbing to Shibasaki eight metres out. In a clumsy effort to channel his custodian’s vision, Townsend put boot to ball on the next tackle, only to deflect it backwards to the right edge, where Young scrambled to contain it, and the Roosters luckily received six again off a Jensen error.

They had the chance to narrow the scoreline here, and Teddy wasn’t risking another Townsend botched kick, grubbering it himself in goal, where Arthars had no choice but to tap it dead with one hand. Still, Reyno’s boot had the last word, as the little general departed from the short dropouts of the match so far to slice it clinically over the sideline as the siren rang out. Earlier in the game he’d correctly deduced that the Steeden wasn’t properly inflated and that same infallible footy instinct was on display in this final second.

When the Broncs returned from the sheds they were sitting at 57% possession and 938-663 run metres. A Walsh error towards the end of their first set meant they didn’t get to their kick but Reynolds used this minor setback as the impetus for some of his best work with the boot all night, resulting in a splendid Cobbo double. For a moment, it looked like the Chooks might deliver first, though, as Marky Mark withstood a pack effort led by Walsh, who was clearly ropeable, to build position, offload to Tupou, and galvanise the left edge attack.

Likewise, Taylor Losalu and Wong contributed big hard runs up the middle, giving Sydney more than enough time to play in the twenty, and yet their last-ditch sweep to the left ended with Walsh recovering the ball from Crichton, in a nice bit of poetic justice for the visitors. By tackle four the Broncos were back where they’d started before Walsh’s error, on the brink of halfway, and Walsh had started to walk off some worrying hobbling in backplay. Cometh the hour cometh the man, as Reyno stepped up and added to his highlights reel.

As if using his team’s brief setback to his advantage, he wrested glory from the pressure of another unexpected last tackle situation. Finding himself too compressed by the defence for a decent kick, he popped it out to Mariner, who lofted it off the right boot for the little general to chase down and kick a second time – a gutsy decision that demonstrated his full faith in Cobbo, who toed it a third time at the ten, scooped it up in almost the same position, using a sliding Young as a fulcrum, and then popped it down with Tedesco on top.

Reyno had his hardest angle so far for the conversion but still nailed it, as the Broncos launched into a carbon copy of their opening set after the break. This time Hunt was determined to get to the kick, booting it long and fast on the fourth. The weighting was just right, forcing Teddy to collect it on the line, where the oncoming Brisbane chase forced him to fumble it backwards, as Young scrambled to ground it in goal and Reyno remonstrated with Gerard Sutton for what he saw as a late shot from Crichton on Hunt after the kick.

This was good leadership from Reyno, since there was an argument to be made that the big Sydney forward made split-second instantaneous contact – it looked worse in slo-mo – and the appeal paid off, as Brisbane launched into a set from the thirty, found themselves five out by tackle three, and were then treated to another piece of Reynolds brilliance. Drifting left, the 288-milestone man pivoted back off the left boot, shifted the Steeden to both hands, showed it once, and then sent a beautiful grubber back out to the right corner.

Mariner was first on the scene and actually beat Tupou there but didn’t end up laying a finger on it – luckily, as it turned out, since this was Cobbo’s moment, the big winger belying his bulk with a balletic slide across the grass to pop it down before Smith could toe it dead. Reynolds was faced with another long-range kick but kept it a perfect night with the boot, as the Broncos settled into their restart – it seemed an age since the Chooks had last touched the footy – and came agonisingly close to one of the best tries of the entire round.

It began with Walsh, who found space up the right on the fourth and lobbed out the offload for Riki to break through the line, cross halfway and make it all the way over the thirty. From there, a very late Carrigan offload back to Paix set up Willison to plough through a swathe of defenders to land five out, so when Jensen ploughed beneath the upright, with a pile of Roosters on top, it felt almost inevitable that he would score – and it was the letoff of the night for the Chooks when he didn’t, so it was imperative Sydney deliver on the next set.

The start was promising, as Teddy and Zach Dockar-Clay, who’d just came on for Steep, delivered big carries up the middle, while the custodian put up his hand for the footy again on the third and flicked it on for Losalu to pick up a few metres and, more importantly, to win six again off off a Carrigan ruck error. It was a real momentum shift, then, when the young no. 19 lost it backwards – such a shift, in fact, that Tedesco wasted his Captain’s Challenge trying to contest it, with the review footage clearly showing the error.

Brisbane had a scrum from their thirty and were all business now, with Cobbo delivering strong post-contacts up the right on play two, the halves swinging it to the left (albeit with a Walsh slip preventing much headway) and Haas marking his return to the park by dragging three Chooks eight metres to break the forty. As it turned out this was the warm-up set rather than the tryscoring set but the end was still fairly respectable, as Reyno launched a high ball to the right edge, where Tupou only just managed the tapback to Marky Mark.

Once more, the Roosters attempted to consolidate and for a moment it looked like they were going to build position, as Smith added twenty metres up the left and flicked it out for Marky Mark to link up with Tupou again – the ex-Tah with an on-the-ground offload, the Giraffe with a kick at speed that Dockar-Clay charged down – but Hunt somehow managed to secure and bring it back into the field of play. Benny had potentially saved six here and would put down four of his own at the end of a magnificent team try on the very next set.

It began, like Cobbo’s first putdown, with Reyno being cramped for the kick, although the route to the try line was even more flamboyant this time. Running it at his forty as Crichton slammed in, Reynolds popped it across to Riki, who reached halfway and lobbed it on for Mariner to verge back inside, keeping the footy in one hand the whole time, until he tumbled to ground at the thirty. At the very last moment he flicked it back for Gosiewski to tap back to Billy Walters, who, with Tedesco around his waist, offloaded it out to Hunt.

So began the second part of this beautiful sequence, as the once-and-future Bronco charged to the thirty and sent it through Shibasaki to Arthars, who showed a real gymnastic genius to dodge a pretty blatant trip from Young, cop Toia around the waist, and yet still maintain his balance enough for a no-looker back to Shibasaki, who crowned this rugby league ballet with a harbour bridge back back to Hunt, who marked his return to Suncorp colours with a try in the corner, as Young surged in for a last-ditch effort to halt the Brisbane tide.

Reynolds would miss the next two kicks but the Broncos were still nine times the Roosters at 36-4 and delivered another astonishing try on the restart, which began with some mammoth Sydney defence. Jensen was so swamped on the first run that he lost it backwards, forcing Shibasaki to scramble for it at the ten; another pack dragged Gosiewski back over the ten on tackle two; Willison struggled to meet the twenty on the third. The Broncs needed Haas, who barged through a Tricoloured sea to reach the brink of the thirty.

After such a compressed opening half to the set, it felt like a minor miracle when Walsh opened up the left edge and scored the most fluid and expansive try of the night. Glimpsing space on the short side, he passed it out through Shibasaki to Arthars, who continued the momentum of that magnificent run for Hunt by making almost sixty metres and drawing in Teddy just enough that Walsh was able to slow down, relish the moment fly into space like a superhero, and provide us with a truly iconic Brisbane moment to begin the 2025 season.

Even with Reyno missing the kick the Broncos were 40-4 and so, with the final quarter looming, Sydney had to change the formula somehow. To their credit, they did just that, opting for a short kickoff that led to Tupou recovering the footy and two more six agains. That kind of daring and momentum is pretty hard to withstand, even for this Broncos side, and sure enough a near Watson-Foketi try acted as a prelude to a Dockar-Clay-Smith combo – short ball from the hooker, wraparound run and smart ball playing from the five-eighth.

Smith spliced the conversion away to the right to keep it to 40-8, and Reynolds was itching for the tee, clearly anxious to use the power of his boot to thwart any incipient Roosters comeback. For a moment, too, it looked like Sydney wouldn’t build much on this try, since, despite kicking it from the opposition forty, Townsend didn’t manage much distance. Yet with Cobbo losing the footy into a Wong shot on tackle two, and Toia surging off the right boot to bring it all the way to the crossbar, the Chooks made their last real comeback bid.  

Brisbane were panic stations as the young Sydney recruit arrived between the uprights, with Hunt coming in below to hold the Steeden down, Willison trying to thwart Toia’s momentum on top, and Haas wrapping himself around from behind to ensure that this fragile containment remained in place for just long enough to deny the four points. Toia himself was about a metre over the try line by the time it all ended, and with no conclusive video footage to demonstrate otherwise, the onfield calling of no grounding was upheld.

Still, this was a scary moment for Brisbane, who would now weather three straight sets on their ten, and the most sustained Sydney flow since the first stanza, before bursting into glory once again to exceed their greatest ever win margin over the Tricolours. The hosts went from side to side, garnered a fresh set from Walsh’s hand in the ruck, and the Broncos scrambled to shut down another big right foot step from Toia out on the right, only for Haas to find himself offside when putting a shot on Townsend, making another restart.

With a third set inside the ten the comeback had to came now, so it was agonising for the home fans when Marky Mark, usually so reliable, fumbled the footy in the face of a Mariner tackle, only briefly regathering it before he was forced to tap it backwards, where Willison came up with it. Cobbo commenced the makeup for his handling error with a huge charge up the right, where he banged off Smith, leaped over Foketi, and required a Tupou-led pack to finally hold him up, having laid the foundation for his team to comfortably cross halfway.

Things accelerated from there, as Carrigan barged over halfway, Walters scooped it up one-handed from dummy half to hit the opposition forty, and Reynolds chipped it to the left edge, where Marky Mark put it down. Just like that Brisbane had another dropout, and were back in control of the game. Teddy may have booted it all the way to the enemy forty, but a strong Haas run off the left foot disposed of a couple of defenders, including Wong and Dockar-Clay, and set the scene for what should have been a tryscoring sweep to the left.

Instead, Smith had his finest moment of the game, delivering arguably the gutsiest one-one-one try of the match to curb Cobbo, who nevertheless kept himself a millimetre in the field of play – and from here the Broncos fell back upon the playbook that had served them so well for a final victory lap. First, we saw Reynolds’ consummate mastery, if not in wresting order from chaos, then in wresting order from contingency, especially on the last tackle. Rushed as he was shaping to grubber, he extemporised a nice kick back to the right edge.

Despite Reyno still being a little off-balance when he put boot to ball, his aim was true, and the Steeden found the chest of Gosiewski, who tapped it back for one of the great balls of the game – a catch-and-pass from Walters that travelled long and low to the left sideline, where Arthars stooped down to catch it at speed and simply outpaced Young to the chalk. As elegant and inevitable as a geometric proof, it was the apex of the Broncos’ ingenuity this evening, just as their next and final try would be the apex of their speed, skill and strength.

It felt right, then, that Reyno curved the kick beautifully though the uprights to keep his men to 46-10. For the second time this evening the Chooks went for a short kickoff after the try but this time Walters got it back, in a superb sequel to his assist in which he dove, somersaulted, fumbled and finally secured the footy on the grass. As a result, Riki was in enemy territory on tackle three, before a high shot from Collins on Walsh got Brisbane the penalty they needed to deliver their final points and reach the coveted half century.

Just as the last try had invoked Reyno’s brilliance at extemporising on the last, now the four points were preceded by an echo of the team try of the first half – a team assist in spirit. Finding himself just inside the twenty on tackle two, Hunt drifted from left to right, glimpsed a gap, tried to break through it, and settled with an offload back to Walters, who popped it out for Reynolds to shape right, pivot off the right boot, weave in and out of a sea of defenders, and finally pass to Gosiewski, who took it on the ground, his back to his try line.

From there, Gosiewski made it third phase back to Haas, who reined it in with one hand and then offloaded once more for Shibasaki, who was contained fifteen out. It didn’t produce a try on this play, but this silkily synergistic Brisbane communication led to one final consolidation on the right, where the Steeden moved through Carrigan, Reynolds, who showed it a couple of times, Walsh, who held it up just long enough, and then Mariner, whose short ball set up Cobbo to bust through Tupou and finally achieve his hat trick.

Cobbo’s ups and downs of the game felt like a microcosm of Brisbane’s resilience more generally – he’d had some of the more frustrating moments this evening, but had come back big every time, and as he put away the final spectre of the Smith tackle by landing the hat trick, and bringing his men to the half century, this outfit, who now had comfortably beaten their 1989 record win margin against the Roosters, felt like a team who could genuinely go all the way in 2025. Their first glimpse of finals brilliance happened here.

Even better, there was no real overlap on this try – it was just speed and strength, the pinnacle of their footy professionalism in the same way Arthars’ putdown had come off their ingenuity and grace under pressure. Reynolds might have missed the kick but at a round fifty, and given his work with the boot tonight, it barely mattered. The best that Sydney could do was muster a consolation try to propel them into their meeting with Penrith in Round 2, and to their credit that’s just what they did, five out from the sheds.

It came off a sin bin for Piakura, who had barely left the bench before he found himself marched for a flop. Teddy was losing his patience now, coming in for some action on the Brisbane backrower, as Sutton barked at him to pull back from the fray. Piakura had been raring to go on the sideline for some time, but he wouldn’t even have to wash his jersey, so little football had he seen, while the Chooks scored midway through the subsequent set, off their last great sweep out right, through Townsend and Toia for Young to make it a double.

This was a good display of competence to end on, as Townsend drifted into the line and held it up for as long as possible, before Toia delivered a deft catch-and-pass that Young reined in with his right hand. Dodging past an Arthars waist tackle, he arrived at the chalk with Paix around his waist and Dockar-Clay on top, but still managed to turn his back to the line, slide in goal, and get the Steeden down in the crook of his arm just before he reached touch. The try was examined from every possible angle, and nothing disproved the call.

Smith had one of the hardest angles of the night from the right sideline but he booted it straight between the posts, in the best conversion of the game as well, a nice final touch for the Chooks. They were restless on the restart, with Crichton offloading to Dockar-Clay to begin the count and Watson making a quick pickup to gain ten extra metres, but a Tedesco slip on the divoted turf quickly quashed their momentum – that is, until Walsh lost Townsend’s kick and Smith popped it out for Tupou to crash over in the left corner.

Still, with Dockar-Clay offside, this was the end of Sydney’s late surge; the remaining possession would belong to Brisbane, who came dangerously close to scoring here. Walters found space early on and lobbed a one-handed offload for Hetherington to reach the red zone, where Watson only just held him up. Carrigan then half-offloaded, half-lost the footy back to Cobbo, who swept it left where Arthars was unable to make his way through a gap. Finally, Walsh had his last flamboyant moment of the night, capping off a stellar game.

Extemporising a grubber down the middle on the last, he paid no mind to the fact that the Roosters got it back, instead executing one of the more muscular individual steals in recent memory. Wrapping his arm over Dockar-Clay’s shoulder to entirely encompass the Steeden, he wrested it back for Brisbane to receive a full set in the ten with a little over a minute on the clock. Hunt grubbered, Crichton tapped it dead, the Broncos had thirty seconds of dropout, and it all ended with Carrigan cleaned up by a Watson-Dockar-Clay combo.

It had been a rousing opener, then, for the Broncos – Madge had clearly worked hard on the defensive issues of their 2024 season, Hunt had marked his return with a powerful performance alongside Reyno in the halves and Carrigan had made a whopping 246 run metres in the front row, a tough prospect for a Roosters outfit that had suffered the loss of JWH. Add in Cobbo’s sixth career hat-trick and this was a team that felt like premiership contenders, primed and pumped for a big game against the Raiders the next Saturday.

Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the Chooks – with one of their biggest team turnovers in recent memory, Radley out with the concussion, and Townsend and Smith struggling to make an immediate impact in the halves, they’d be looking to their skipper and custodian (and to the breakout potential of Toia) to guide them through an equally big game against a Penrith outfit flushed from a hard-won victory over the Sharkies in Vegas; after such a historic loss to Brisbane, the ideal reset would be defeating the fourpeaters.