Souths crashed after Maguire took them to the title. Will history repeat in Brisbane?

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Opinion

October 10, 2025 — 7.11pm

Two months before Michael Maguire guided South Sydney to a drought-breaking premiership in 2014, Wayne Bennett labelled the Rabbitohs predictable.

“There’s not a coach in the NRL that doesn’t know how they’re going to play,” Bennett observed.

But no one, not even Bennett, could have predicted how quickly things would go awry after Rabbitohs won the grand final that year. Before they were to kick off their premiership defence, chief executive Shane Richardson had moved on. So too chief financial officer Joe Kelly, who was mooted to replace Richardson, as well as chief commercial officer John Richardson. Peter Holmes a Court, who had a rocky relationship with co-owner Russell Crowe, had just sold his share of the club.

If winning, as Jack Gibson mused, starts in the front office, the Rabbitohs had a crater in theirs.

Things didn’t get any better on the field. Sam Burgess, Ben Te’o, Api Koroisau, Lote Tuqiri and Beau Champion were all gone. And it was left to Maguire to keep it all together, trying to do more with less. A slide was inevitable.

In 2015, Souths finished seventh, then 12th the following year. By September of 2017, a year in which Greg Inglis played one game before rupturing his ACL, things hadn’t improved, and Maguire paid the price with his job.

Reece Walsh and coach Michael Maguire celebrate the premiership win.

It has taken “Madge” more than a decade to experience another NRL victory lap, which he completed with Brisbane after their epic 26-22 victory over Melbourne. Are there more good times ahead, or will the Broncos suffer a similar slide?

A hint could be gleaned in the coach’s office at Red Hill, just three days after the club’s drought-breaking victory. There was Maguire, back behind his desk, conducting season-ending reviews with bleary-eyed players. None of them was satisfied with what they had just accomplished.

After just a couple of days to reflect on what the Broncos had achieved, the former Kiwis and Blues coach was already plotting a title defence.

“We got a reward on the back of where we finished, but there are so many things we can [improve], the staff and the players are still growing,” Maguire said.

Michael Maguire celebrates victory with South Sydney in the 2014 grand final.

“There’s parts of our games that we looked at that needed to improve, and they were able to find that in the back end of the season with those games.

“I think there’s so much more in this group.”

Over the course of many chats with Maguire over the years, when he talks about organisations that enjoy success, he says the common denominator is “alignment”. It was evident when Souths won the 2014 premiership, but evaporated when key players and support staff dispersed soon after the Foundation Bell was rung on that October evening.

There is no sense of a repeat of that in Brisbane. The core of the playing group, board, and management team that bought into Maguire’s vision remains and shares the belief that the journey hasn’t reached its destination.

All were challenged at various times during Maguire’s first season at the helm, most notably during a horror seven-game stretch that garnered just one win. With the critics, along with several disgruntled Old Boys who will never get over the sacking of Kevin Walters, putting the boot in, it would have been easy to waver.

“Credit to the organisation, they stuck to the course, everyone was tested,” Maguire said.

“That was pleasing, the times that we were challenged, everyone just stayed the course and stayed aligned.”

Aligned. There’s that word again.

One word you won’t hear spoken about the Broncos is predictable. Bennett once told me that his Souths comment was the greatest compliment he could give; that there’s nothing more frustrating than knowing something is coming at you, and realising you are powerless to stop it.

There are many ways to describe this Broncos side, but predictable is not one of them. Is Reece Walsh predictable? Could anyone have predicted those three consecutive finals comebacks?

With his kids in school and the season over, Maguire will take the next few weeks to meet with Brisbane business and sporting leaders to learn what makes them tick. Then there’s another overseas study tour planned, where Maguire will try to find the extra one per cent required to keep the Broncos on top of the heap.

It’s impossible to predict how any NRL season will play out. Will the Broncos players, after a summer of plaudits and back slaps, be prepared to again put in the hard work required to win a premiership? Will a cohort often accused of carrying on like rock stars be prepared to again pay the price of success? Time will tell.

One thing that you can count on is that Maguire isn’t satisfied and will do everything in his power to ensure the latest triumph isn’t a one-off.