Broncos bringing fitness edge into NRL finals campaign

The Brisbane Broncos charge into Friday night’s NRL qualifying final on fresher legs than their three chief rivals – the Panthers, Storm, and Warriors – courtesy of a cushy end to their regular season.

Heading into the money end of the NRL season, statistics reveal Brisbane’s top squad has played 160 minutes less football in the last three months than Melbourne, whom they face first-up at Suncorp Stadium this week.

The Broncos have benefitted from byes in rounds 16, 17, and 25 while also resting a majority of their stars against the Storm last week.

By comparison, Melbourne have had only one bye in that period, in round 19, but they also opted to rest a stack of stars in their round 27 clash, which they won 32-22 while inflicting a 14th-straight loss on the Broncos.

That’s a massive edge at a time when intensity and physicality levels crank up another notch or two and the body is pushed to the extreme and expected to perform under fatigue.

Leading Australian sports physiotherapist and exercise scientist Michael Dalgleish, who has worked with rugby league players and other elite athletes for decades, including the Queensland State of Origin team, described it as a “double-edged sword”.

“Firstly, you’ve got the lack of impact factor, which allows the niggles from a muscular (and) skeletal view to recover,” he told BettingSite.com.au.

“The negative though is you don’t have the physiological load, which is definitely important, or the physical impact load, which at this time of the season is probably not such a big issue.”

According to Dalgleish, the Broncos team looks fitter and faster than it has in previous seasons.

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“Their explosiveness off the line, their repeat efforts, their ability to cope in the last 20 minutes have been exemplary and in excess of what I thought they would achieve,” he said.

Dalgleish believes a lot depends on what type of training the players have been doing to emulate match fatigue while they are not playing games.

“The heartrate needs to be pushed up. Going back the 10 metres six times and then dealing with repeat sets, you have to be able to reproduce that on the training paddock without the impact,” he said.

“If the Broncos come out and play really well on Friday night, you could say it was a combination of the double-edged sword.

“The first being they haven’t had the contact, so a lot of guys have cleaned up some niggling injuries, guys like Adam Reynolds, because he is older, have been carrying at this end of the season.

“Secondly, it is a credit to coach Kevin Walters and his staff because they have been able to reproduce, via their sophisticated GPS equipment which wasn’t around 25 years ago, the type of training thresholds they need to be at to keep them as sharp as they have looked in their high-quality performances this year.

“The bottom line is you would expect they will be fresher having played less football than their finals rivals.”

Despite having posted 14 straight wins over Brisbane, the Storm will go into the clash as outsiders with NRL bookmakers at $2.34 with the Broncos $1.61 favourites.

“If you expect history to keep repeating itself, you are getting a great price Melbourne,” said TAB’s Gerard Daffy.

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