In 2002, the ‘Baby Broncos’ produced the standard bearer for shorthanded mid-season victories with a stunning performance at Campbelltown Stadium, which has become embedded in NRL folklore.
The State of Origin period has been a perennial challenge for Brisbane since its 1988 inception, the club routinely contributing a large contingent of the Queensland squad every year.
The Broncos set a new record in 2001 when 11 of their players turned out for the Maroons – but that series was played on standalone Sunday nights. Origin reverted to Wednesdays in 2002, however, stretching their playing resources to the limit.
Queensland picked 10 Brisbane players – Darren Lockyer, Lote Tuqiri, Brent Tate, Shaun Berrigan, Shane Webcke, Andrew Gee, Gorden Tallis, Carl Webb, Dane Carlaw and Chris Walker – for game two of the 2002 rubber, while Petero Civoniceva was ruled out after playing in the opening clash. State coach Wayne Bennett was also unavailable to oversee the Broncos’ Round 12 road trip to take on Wests Tigers and first-choice lock Ashley Harrison had suffered a season-ending injury in their previous game.
Long-serving assistant coach Craig Bellamy was left to prepare an unrecognisable line-up featuring six debutants: fullback Nick Parfitt, winger Scott Minto, prop Robert Tanielu, and bench trio Nathan Friend, Kris Kahler and Steve Lacaze. Halfback Brett Seymour and interchange Elia Tuqiri had made their maiden NRL appearance a week earlier, while winger Steve Irwin was lining up for the third time.
The team’s average age was just 21, including four teenagers, and only Phillip Lee had not played for Queensland Cup feeder club Toowoomba Clydesdale during the year. Lee, Scott Prince, Shane Walker, Origin reps Stuart Kelly and Brad Meyers, and a 20-year-old Corey Parker were the only Broncos with more than 20 top-grade games to their credit.
“It’s not the same set-up as it is these days where you’ve got that full-time squad of 30 – we had much less than that at the time at Broncos and a number of the boys had to ask their bosses for the day off work,” hooker and stand-in captain Walker recalls for Big League.
“[Another] sign of the times was there was nowhere near the football staff numbers that we see today. We had Wayne, Craig was assistant coach and also did a bit of the conditioning, and we had a weights coach.
“Wayne was very much about, ‘these are our rules, do this in defence, this is way we attack and if we do that, that’ll stand up’. But I had noticed for at least 12 months, Craig would give Wayne four of five foolscap pages of these handwritten notes before we’d go into meetings or video reviews.
“But Wayne never really referred to him much – it was about looking after our own backyard. That week with Craig gave us a great insight into who he was as a coach.
“He was able to identify the various strengths and weaknesses of the opposition. Despite us having [so many] debutants that night we one hundred percent had the belief – underpinned by what he’d shown us, how we were going to beat them and where they were vulnerable and where we could exploit them.”
The Terry Lamb-coached Tigers had hit a form slide after a promising 4-2 start to the season, but a seasoned side including Darren Senter, John Skandalis, Robbie Mears, Matt Seers, Kevin McGuiness and Joel Caine was expected to be far too strong for the patched-up Broncos at Campbelltown Stadium.
The visitors’ confidence was immediately evident, however, and they posted the only try of the first half when Walker sent the towering Tanielu through a gap to score under the posts. Christchurch-born Tanielu typified the Broncos’ part-timer factor, starting work at 3am five days a week at the Brisbane Markets.
The boilover began to materialise just after the break when a kick in behind Tigers winger Hassan Saleh – a weakness pinpointed by Bellamy – eluded fullback Caine and sat up for Irwin to score. A 90-metre intercept try to centre Casey McGuire in the 50th minute put the Broncos up 18-2 before Mears belatedly grabbed the Tigers’ first four-pointer.
Prince caught Saleh out again with a cross-field kick as Irwin completed a double, before a sensational Tanielu offload sent McGuire, who was making his 12th NRL appearance, in for his second with three minutes remaining – sealing an astonishing, wholly convincing 28-14 result.
“Thanks for being gentle with us, it was our first time,” Bellamy quipped to media post-match.
Ironically, Bellamy would spurn an offer from the Tigers to begin his path to rugby league coaching greatness with Melbourne Storm in 2003.
Friend and Seymour went on to carve out lengthy careers in the top flight, while the versatile McGuire represented Queensland and won a premiership with the Broncos, and Minto became an unlikely cult hero on the flank.
But journeyman forward Michael Coorey, Irwin, Parfitt, and Tanielu, who was eventually forced to retire due to a serious neck injury, only appeared in the NRL a handful more times, and Tuqiri and Lacaze did not feature in the NRL again – their rugby league legacies predominantly tied to the ‘Baby Broncos’’ improbable win on a Friday night in western Sydney.
“It’s only the one game that I [was captain], but I still dine out on it,” beams Walker, who joined South Sydney the following season and retired in 2006 after 150 NRL games.
“I’ve got a business here in Brisbane, we have a corporate box at the Broncos and every year I ask them what the discount is for Broncos captains with a hundred-percent winning record. It doesn’t carry a lot of weight, though.
“[Our Origin players] were in camp all watching the game, and for us to be able to do them proud was obviously special.
“Whenever we see each other, it’s pretty cool. On that night we were able to get the job done and there’s plenty of team that have done it since.”
