Melbourne, Sep 27 : The Brisbane Broncos, an Australian professional rugby league football club, has adopted troubled all rounder Andrew Symonds as their 18th player.

Coach Ivan Henjak invited Symonds to join his squad two months ago to help his younger players deal with the pressure of football.

Symonds has an unpaid role, but he attends every training session and flew to Melbourne for last night’s preliminary final against the Storm, FOX Sports reported.

“Roy has always been a Broncos supporter and he asked if he could come back and train with the boys this year and it was no problem,” Henjak said.

“He’s an athlete that has competed at a very high level and has been involved in a lot of high-pressure matches, and that experience is invaluable around some of the young players we have. Most of all, the boys love having him around so we are more than happy for him to be part of the dressing-room,” he added.

Symonds mixes his role with the Broncos from being a gear steward, a motivator, running drills against the players and helping with statistics.

“They’ve been great to me, they have welcomed me with open arms so I really enjoy going down there and mucking around with the boys,” Symonds said.

“I’ve been having some good yarns with Ivan Henjak about how sports teams are run. I’ve found it interesting to sit in on team meetings and see how they go about preparing for a game. They are quite different to cricket. One thing I notice is they don’t pollute their thoughts with the opposition.” (ANI)