Cooper Cronk believes Reece Walsh is overplaying his hand, while Matty Johns has identified where the Broncos need to improve to get their premiership push back on track.
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The Broncos’ upset 22-20 loss to the Eels all but blew their top four hopes with the Panthers jumping therm on the ladder into fifth.
Walsh had another rocks and diamonds performance with his 151 run metres, four tackle busts and one linebreak coming with three costly errors, a missed tackle and a penalty conceded.
Walsh is often the barometer for the Broncos’ success in that when he plays well and cuts down his errors, while not forcing the issue, the team performs better and usually wins.
Johns believes the Broncos are guilty of playing too much footy in their own half and not building into good try-scoring positions.
“There is a lot of areas they can improve,” Johns said on Matty and Cronk.
“The willingness to not got frustrated and try to blow sides away. Being willing to sit in that arm wrestle a little bit longer.
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“Purely from an attack point of view I think they are playing too much half-field football.
“The Broncos are a team that can play a bit of structured football, but only to penetrate past a scrum line.
“It is all about working away and working their smart little plays, but purely to gather defenders and get past the scrum line and open the field up.”
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Cronk agreed that the key is getting their two best attacking weapons in open space.
“It is about trying to get Reece Walsh and Ezra Mam one-on-one with space, so they can use their speed and footwork,” Cronk said.
However, getting Walsh and Mam in open space is only the first challenge for the Broncos and then the two stars have to make the right decisions with the ball.
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Johns pointed to an overlap against the Eels where Walsh ran too far with the ball before throwing a cut-out pass that went forward as an example of where he and the Broncos are going wrong.
“On that long sweeping movement, even if you aren’t going to beat them in one go, it disrupts the defence and all of a sudden there is an offload out the back and a quick play-the-ball and that’s when Ezra and Reece start to carve up through the middle,” Johns explained.
“There was an example against the Eels that ended up being a forward pass from Walsh, but you see how much more dangerous it appears.
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“They need to do more of that. They have got to open up the field a little bit.
“I like the structured stuff, but it is a means to an end and the structured play is very good to get them past the scrum line, but then straight away go shot for shot and get them straight over to the other side of the field.”
Cronk believes Walsh is trying too hard to set up the try every time he gets the ball and sometimes needs to let it go through the hands and take the simple option to effect the overlap.
“Reece overplayed his hand on that,” Cronk said.
“When Reece got the ball he was outside of Hawkins and had speed and he could have done something.
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“When he gets the ball he is outside the defender. If he hits Jesse Arthars now, it is probably a linebreak down the right-hand side.
“He is just trying to do way too much and trying to win with every play.”
Cronk warned the Broncos have the players to go to a grand final, but called on Adam Reynolds to rein Walsh in and put the team first ahead of personal glory.
“The Broncos are starting to get frustrating because I feel like they need a lightning bolt moment,” Cronk said.
“If they can just get it together a grand final opportunity is there for them.
“It is on Adam Reynolds to reel him in a little bit because the team is first and they had an opportunity and were doing all the right things playing the long game and they came out in the second half and started making errors and forcing the passes.
“It gave Parramatta, who are at the bottom of the ladder an opportunity to stay in the game.”
