Brisbane’s next task will be a road trip to Townsville to face the in-form Cowboys, before clashes with the Eels, Dolphins and Storm following a round 24 bye.

Speaking on Nine’s Billy Slater Podcast, the Maroons coach conceded it was “near impossible” for the Broncos to make the cut, but thinks they have the team to do it.

“I’m not willing to write them off right now,” Slater said.

“You’re out when you mathematically can’t make the finals. I feel that the magic number is 30 points and there’s five games to go and they’re sitting on 20 points. If they win their last five games, they finish on 30 and they’ve got a pretty good for and against.

“It’s gonna be really hard … they’ve got a few tough games coming up. They’re as much of a chance as a few of the other teams in the competition.

“I get the feeling that it’s near impossible to play finals, but I don’t write anyone off until they are mathematically out.”

While there are a litany of issues facing coach Kevin Walters, the side’s leaky defence and lack of resilience has been the major concern over the past month.

Since a solid showing in defeat against Penrith in round 18, the battling Broncos have conceded 131 points in four games and Slater is worried that might be tough to fix.

“They need to sort their defence out and they need to find that hard edge and that’s not easy to turn around in a week,” he said.

“They just need to get their footy going, find out what’s not working … they’ve got a team there that can perform and they can get this done if they turn their footy around.

“It doesn’t matter who they are playing – they could be playing the Innisfail Leprechauns – they’ve got to turn their footy around, that’s the key.

“It’s been disappointing the last little bit and they’ve had their fair share of things go against them. Payne Haas is a huge loss, but they’ve still got a really good footy team.”