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Message: [QUOTE="Big Pete, post: 3307573, member: 1899"] When the Broncos entered the 2000s season, they were expected to be competitive but nobody thought they'd be as dominant as they were. They were a team going through a transition and while they had some good players in Lockyer, Tallis, Sailor, Webcke etc. it remained to be seen whether they could match it with the top teams. That expectation was reflected in the season opener against Wests where Brisbane did well just to draw against an unfancied Tigers outfit. Brisbane just struggled to combine effectively the Ikin-Sailor combination in particular was just like oil and water. In the end it came down to some individual brilliance for the Broncos to conjure up a comeback, only for Caine to run past Walker to split the points between the two clubs. As an aside the Wests Tigers would actually entrench themselves well inside the Top 8 for the majority of the 2000 season. Unfortunately for them they had a horrible back-end to the season which saw them plummet down the ladder. Brisbane were far from a dominant team but the team came up with a couple of victories that were really important. I'd say the most important was a victory they stole from Cronulla in Round 4 where they somehow found a way to win. Cronulla had done enough to win the game but in the dying stages, Brad Thorn found himself with the football and put up a hail merry kick which Dell happened to claim and scored. What that victory did is just give the Broncos that confidence and they invariably won those close contests. It also gave Brisbane an idea of what team they were post-Alfie and despite trying to play a traditional style of football it wasn't working for them. So they made the decision to shift Ikin to five-eighth and Carroll into the centres with Berrigan as the utility if they needed more strike. Once Brisbane established that combination they were virtually unbeatable and had such a strong team across the park. Building off the platform they set in 1999, Brisbane played a power game with Lote Tuqiri coming of age and quickly establishing himself as one of the top wingers in the competition. Luke Priddis took more responsibility and was one of the best dummy halves in the competition. Fans will also point out a player like Harvey Howard who was this no-nonsense prop from England via the Magpies who did a fantastic job of filling in for Andrew Gee. They also had some really good young players coming through. Ash Harrison in his rookie season looked like he was going to be the next Johnny Raper. He was an excellent defender but he could also ball-play and he gave Brisbane another option whenever he came onto the field. Darren Mapp was a hero in one of the Broncos most important games of the season the Round 10 18-all draw with Melbourne. Brisbane lost three players during the course of the game, which during the unlimited interchanges era was huge and yet Mapp really stood up in that game and earned himself a contract with Canberra. Then you had players like Carl Webb, Justin Hodges, Danny Bampton really turn heads. The other thing to take note off is that in just two years, the competition had gone from 20 teams to 14. That meant you had a lot of strong rosters, but teams were struggling to build the right combinations. The horrible start to 1999 provided Brisbane with a silver lining since it gave them a head-start and the Broncos only had to make minimal changes to build this super-team. I won't go too in-depth about the rest of the season. The cliff-notes version is that Brisbane ramped it up before the finals, suffered a scare when they lost Webcke and got beaten 28-0 by Sydney. However once they came back from 20-6 HT deficit against Cronulla they just did enough to beat Parramatta and Sydney to win premiership #5. Webcke returned for the semi and it just gave the teams even more inspiration and they just seemed to always have their noses infront. It's a lot of preamble to get to the period I really want to talk about. The main point I want to get across here is that in 1998 Brisbane proved they were the undisputed champions of Rugby League. In 1999 that all came to a violent crash and right as it seemed like the club had come down to earth, they quickly pick themselves back up and have an even more dominant 2000 season where they win it comfortably. Brisbane were just a juggernaught, but that would be the end of an era with the ensuing years being a real mixed bag. [/QUOTE]

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