Brisbane Broncos coach Anthony Seibold believes his side can still make the NRL finals and urges fans to "stick solid", despite another crushing defeat against Melbourne Storm.
The Broncos slumped to their eighth loss of the season - a 46-8 thrashing against the rampant Storm at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night.
Seibold's men trailed 14-8 at the break, before Melbourne ran in six unanswered tries to move atop the NRL standings. Meanwhile, the Broncos languish in 15th, although they're only four points off the top eight.
"If you're a fan and a supporter, you've got to stick solid through the poor times and this is a poor time for our club," says Seibold.
"The club has had plenty of good times, but this is a real challenge at the moment.
"One thing I do know is the group I've got, they'll get better - I'm optimistic about them getting better. You can all see that we've got a lot of guys at the beginning of their careers and they're going to get better, but they've got to get games into them.
"We won't lose belief in making the finals until we can't. There's an old saying: 'Where there's life, there's hope'.
"While we're still breathing and still a chance of making it, we'll do our best."
Storm coach Craig Bellamy admits his side were lucky to have won by such a big margin.
"I just thought, when we scored that try early, we went away from what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it.
"The second half was a big improvement. I'm not trying to play it down, but I think we scored a couple of lucky tries, and they had a couple disallowed and that they could have scored, so to me, the scoreboard could have been a lot closer."
Meanwhile, North Queensland Cowboys were unable to win their first game under interim coach Josh Hannay, losing 24-12 to Manly Sea Eagles at Queensland Country Bank Stadium.
Earlier this week, club great Hannay replaced Paul Green, who stood down after seven years with the Cowboys.
"The beginning of the week was really difficult and challenging in processing what had happened," says Hannay.
"We've had periods of footy this year where what's let us down has been an absolute soft underbelly and what I would call an attitude problem - I didn't see that out there tonight.
"I can live with those errors, while they're costly - I can't live with the soft stuff. I was really encouraged that I didn't see that."
Meanwhile, the Sea Eagles's win lifts them inside the NRL's top eight.
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