Kristian Woolf: ‘We’re extremely close’

Dolphins NRL Head Coach Kristian Woolf says he will address the issues that have stood between his team and a win so far this season, at training next week, but believes they are close.

The Dolphins lost the first Battle for Brisbane game of 2025 to the Broncos (20-12) in wet and slippery conditions at Suncorp Stadium tonight (March 28).

See photos from the game at the end of this story.

Fans braved the rain, which was torrential at times, with ponchos and fins the order of the day.

The Dolphins’ start was fast and furious, with free-flowing attacking footy and confidence before errors crept in and cruelled the momentum they were creating.

“I thought we started really well there. We had some opportunities early on … (but) again we built a little bit of pressure, we dropped the ball, play three I think it was and got into making errors coming out of our own end,” Woolf said.

“That’s a bit of problem for us at the moment. It’s been a problem for the first four weeks. It’s obviously something we’ve got to clean up.

“We certainly put ourselves under a bit of pressure. What I was disappointed with was … when the game got into its cycles, we tended to be the one to make the error first and then when we made an error, we backed it up with a couple of poor things defensively.

“I don’t think we were overly poor defensively for the night, but that tended to be the trend.”

When asked how he would address those issues at training next week, Woolf said the past two weeks of training had been “pretty good” but conceded there were “a couple of little things we can clean up”.

“We’re not a mile off at all. We’re extremely close. That (the Broncos) is a team that most people would have at the top of the ladder and I thought we were right in the contest for really long periods.

“We’re certainly not far off, we’ve just got a little bit of cleaning up to do. That’s what training’s going to be about.”

And he won’t be making big changes to the squad, despite four losses in a row.

“I’m not disappointed with any individual. There’s no individual out there that I don’t think is having a crack. I just think we’re not quite getting it right as a team at the moment. Making changes isn’t necessarily the answer. We’ll have a look at the video and we’ll sort it out next week,” he said.

Woolf said he wouldn’t be rushing newcomer Francis Molo into the side next week and would give him a chance to find his feet at the Dolphins before he plays.

“How long that takes, I’m not sure. We’ve got to get him in a couple of team sessions first and see how he actually looks, get him into a bit of contact. He won’t be too far away, obviously, and he can help us but I’m not going to put him at risk by throwing him in too early either,” Woolf said.

Dolphins fans saw glimpses of the never-say-die style of play they love about the team in the final 10 minutes of the game and Captain Tom Gilbert says lack of effort is not the issue.

“Our attention to detail’s probably been poor but the way we’ve been preparing the last couple of weeks … our (slow) start to the season hasn’t been a lack of effort or physicality. That’s for sure,” Gilbert said.

“It’s been attention to detail. We’ve fallen short because, honestly, I think we’re doing it to ourselves but I’m super proud of our team at the moment.

“We are getting closer (to a win) but we’re making the same mistakes and again and again and again. We’ve got to address that at training and we’ll address it with our prep this week. We are close but we do need to fix a few things.”