That was despite Dearden playing as the Broncos' first-choice halfback over the last 10 rounds of last season, albeit under axed coach Anthony Seibold.<\/p>\n
But Deardon says his competition with Croft is driving him to greater heights.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
"It's really good to have a lot of competition. It makes you work hard, it makes you train better," Dearden told Wide World of Sports.<\/p>\n
"I'm good mates with Crofty too.<\/p>\n
"It's a good competition and there's a lot of competition for spots at the club at the moment. It's been quite a competitive pre-season which has made it quite enjoyable."<\/p>\n
Whoever wins the battle out of Dearden and Croft will likely partner Anthony Milford in the halves at Suncorp Stadium in Round One.<\/p>\n
The Broncos' spine appears to be shaping up with Jamayne Isaako at fullback, Milford at five-eighth<\/a>, Croft at halfback and Jake Turpin at hooker, who's been all but certain to wear the No.9 since Andrew McCullough left for St George Illawarra.<\/p>\n Dearden and the baby Broncos are tasked with propelling Brisbane back into the top eight, after the club crashed to its first wooden spoon in history in a nightmare 2020 campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n "One of my dreams growing up was to play for the Maroons, but this year I just want to focus on getting myself into the Round One side, having a really good season of playing NRL full-time and really try to find my feet," Dearden said.<\/p>\n "Everything that happens on the back of that is a bonus. It's a dream of mine and I'd love to play for the Maroons jersey, but I just want to focus on my club footy at the moment and playing with the Brisbane Broncos."<\/p>\n For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em> clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Young Broncos playmaker Tom Dearden says he's embracing his running battle with Brodie Croft in his pursuit to lock down Brisbane's halfback position and eventually […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42145"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42147,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42145\/revisions\/42147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n