A year after claiming NRL title, Maguire is under pressure. What Broncos do next will define the club

It is scarcely believable that Michael Maguire, a year after bringing the Broncos their first premiership in two decades, has been under pressure to keep his job.But Claudio Ranieri, who steered Leicester City to the most incredible fairytale English Premier League title in 2016, was axed six months into the next season. The EPL has a merciless sacking culture, where the solution to every problem is a coach decapitation.The question facing Brisbane is not so much Maguire’s performance or the Broncos’ standing on the table as whether the club wants to have a sacking culture (like many of the NRL’s less successful clubs).Sacking coaches is a statement that goes beyond particular personalities; it defines a club. To take a contrast, if the Sydney Roosters had a sacking culture, there would have been plenty of reasons to remove Trent Robinson after the team’s chronic underperformance (relative to its roster strength), its plague of errors and indiscipline, and a string of abortive recruitments, including Dom Young, Brandon Smith and Chad Townsend.But chairman Nick Politis is nothing if not loyal, and while the Roosters are mistake-prone week on week in 2026, they keep winning games and have a very good chance of winning the premiership.There are many variables and matters beyond a club’s control, but one thing within its powers is whether it wants to have a sacking culture. If reports of a Maguire contract extension are true, the Broncos have made a statement about more than just one person.Could the Broncos sack Michael Maguire a year after he delivered a breakthrough title?Getty ImagesReece is the word for BrisbaneThe number of the week is 86: how many times Reece Walsh received the ball in the Broncos’ win over the Panthers on Thursday. It’s an all-time NRL record for a fullback, and a reflection of Walsh’s importance as playmaker, backfield runner, kick receiver, chief cook and bottle-washer for the premiers.In trying to unlock the form that sent them on their late winning run in 2025, the Broncos are desperate. It worked on Friday, with a surprise victory and a flicker of hope.No team wants its game to revolve entirely around one player, but maybe the Broncos’ last chance is to accept that it’s Reece or bust.Reece Walsh (left) was in the middle of everything on Thursday night.NRL PhotosAFL in a different leagueAfter its $5.3 billion broadcast rights deal, the NRL is justifiably riding high in its obsession with one-upping the AFL as Australia’s most-watched football code.On the other hand, there is a deep impression made by the evidence of your eyes.On a wet Friday night, the NRL and AFL went head-to-head at Moore Park, with Roosters v Storm being played next door to Swans v Adelaide. At Allianz Stadium, 16,010 fans suffered in silence through a sloppy slog of a game. They were drowned out by the constant noise and singing from 33,413 at the SCG.Another big crowd watched Adelaide beat the Swans in Sydney on Friday night.Getty ImagesThis is nothing new – almost every week the Swans play in Sydney, they draw more than any NRL game. In its drive to be the top television winter sport, the NRL struggles to compete as the top live spectator event.It’s not really important to the short-term economic health of the game, but over time, the live experience does matter. People want a great night out. They come again, they tell their friends. The AFL delivers the live experience better, week on week, than its made-for-TV rival.Touchy subjectOne of my bugbears in NRL games is why the touch judges creep so far onto the field, often 10 metres or more, without any discernible reason. I’m sure they communicate with the referee and the players, but no matter how close they get they still can’t seem to pick up a forward pass or an offside, or tell the difference between a knock-on and a knock-back.The Dragons were victims of some terrible calls on Saturday, despite the touch judges being close enough to play in the centres. What are they doing? If nothing, why can’t they stay off the field?The chair essentialsOn Peter V’landys’ potential move to combine the roles of ARL Commission chairman and NRL chief executive, it may be relevant to note that the executive chair position in Australian businesses becomes rarer as those businesses grow.The ASX Corporate Governance Council recommends specifically that a chair and CEO not be the same person: “Having the role of chair and CEO exercised by the same individual is unlikely to be conducive to the board effectively performing its role of challenging management and holding them to account.”Put simply, in a large business a CEO should not be marking his own homework. An executive chairman is more common in smaller and founder-led businesses.So it’s counter-intuitive that as the NRL grows and its responsibilities broaden, it would consider concentrating power in this way. Its achievements, under V’landys as chairman and Andrew Abdo as chief executive, are considerable.The model, not being broken, is not urgently calling for a fix.Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.From our partners