Michael Maguire has been lauded for one of the great rugby league comeback stories after going from being sacked by the wooden spooners to making a Grand Final three years later.
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In 2022, Maguire was given the tap on the shoulder 12 games into his fourth season with the Tigers, after winning just 29 of his 80 games in charge of the club at a win percentage of 36.25.
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It was a far cry from his 85 wins from 153 games in charge of South Sydney from 2012 to 2017 at a 55.56 win percentage, including a drought-breaking premiership in 2014.
However, back-to-back losing seasons with Souths in 2016 and 2017 saw him axed in favour of Anthony Seibold, who left the club after one season to join the Broncos on a five-year deal and Wayne Bennett came to Souths in a direct swap.
Maguire sat out the 2018 season coaching New Zealand, but returned to the NRL with the Tigers in 2019 and won 11 of 24 games at 45.83.
However, his Tigers career went south from then on and he won just 18 games in the next two and a half seasons, including just three from nine before he was axed in 2022.
Maguire turned his attention to coaching the Kiwis to a World Cup campaign and then the NSW Blues to an Origin series triumph in 2024, but he always held a desire to be a career coach in the NRL and was waiting for the right opportunity to rejoin the week to week coaching ranks.
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When the Broncos parted ways with Kevvie Walters in late 2024, Maguire was given the green light to return to the NRL with one of the biggest clubs in the game, capping a remarkable return from the depths of his Tigers stint three seasons earlier.
Paul Crawley praised Maguire for his resilience and ability to turn around his NRL coaching career in such a short space of time.
“When he was sacked by the Tigers in 2022, midway through the season, his career was in tatters, his reputation was in tatters,” Crawley said on NRL 360.
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“As future head coach, he was going to struggle to get a job and of course that had come on the back of the mail that came out of South Sydney when he was there.
“But since then, he got handed a lifeline by the Kiwis. He beat Australia 30-0 in that Pacific Championships final.
“He came back, he picked his war with Billy Slater the following year and he won New South Wales the Origin Series.
“And what he’s done at Brisbane this year, for all the criticism about his hard techniques and the spew buckets and the baseball bats and everything else that goes with Madge, they’ve come back at the end of the season and won two finals games, coming back from 14 points behind.
“So all the work that he’d done earlier in the season, you just can’t deny the fact what he’s done. It’s like it’s an incredible, on the cusp of a grand slam.”
The Daily Telegraph’s Dean Ritchie marvelled at Maguire’s ability to rise from the ashes of his Tigers stint and climb back to the top of the NRL mountain with the Broncos.
“That’s as low as you can go to be dumped by the Tigers who won three wooden spoons,” Ritchie said.
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“Let’s be fair dinkum, you cannot go any lower. He then flums the New South Wales job, wins the series and before we know it, he’s coaching the biggest rugby league team in Australia into a grand final. It’s an extraordinary comeback. It really is.”
Ritchie also took issue with Phil Rothfield’s criticism of Maguire’s hard line techniques because the proof has been in the pudding in two epic comeback wins over the Raiders and the Panthers to make the Grand Final.
“I know Buzz (Rothfield) has been very anti-Madge in terms of army camps and spew buckets, but the fact they’ve come back from 14 points down in two successive games, shows you that the hard work that they did in pre-season physically, and the hard work he whacked into the mob is paying off at the back end of the year.”
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However, Gorden Tallis questioned if the Broncos players have also matured during Maguire’s reign from the last time they made a Grand Final in 2023.
“Don’t you think that they’re just 50 games older than the last time they’d been there?” Tallis asked.
“So now Reece Walsh is getting older. He was still a bit wet behind the ears.”
Ritchie replied: “Possibly, but whatever Madge has done this year, you have to concede it has worked.”
Tallis then questioned if former coach Kevvie Walters could have done the same with the Broncos this year after taking them to a decider in 2023.
“Look, it’s a hypothetical,” Ritchie replied.
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However, Crawley agreed the Broncos have matured as players since they last made a decider and lost to the Panthers, after being three tries up in the Grand Final.
“I think what you’re saying though is a valid point in that two years ago, the maturity of the Broncos team was very different to what it is now,” Crawley said.
“And last year there were a lot of injuries and Kevvie did leave a great squad behind, but you still can’t deny what Madge has done is bloody incredible.”
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