Round 14: The Rise and Fall of the Cowbores

In last night's game, the North Queensland Cowboys lost to Newcastle by 30-18. This was the Cowboys' 7th straight loss overall, 4th straight loss in Townsville and they remain 4 points adrift equal at the foot of the ladder: incredible numbers for a team widely considered as top-8 certainties in pre-season prognostications.

They lost to the Knights despite eliminating a 14-point deficit, despite benefitting from Knights' ill-discipline for much of the game, despite using their quick players to push several lumbering Knights' forwards towards exhaustion in the game's dying minutes and despite winning the field position battle for most of the game.

But the main reason they lost because their defensive structure and defensive performance was, to put it mildly, disgraceful. To be fair, they were missing a host of players whose presence is important to the Cowboys' defensive play, but they were not the team being run ragged due to lots of dropped ball or giving up a number of penalties. They had no excuses for their terrible defensive play emanating from tiredness or fatigue.

There are two very disappointing aspects of this woeful defensive effort for Cowboys' supporters: 1. The quality of their defence has been in decline for over a year now, but (until the start of 2008) it had been masked by timely point-scoring and 2. Defensive effort was the catalyst, the turning point for the Cowboys. Their breakthrough season of 2004 was built on defensive fundamentals, hard work and a cohesive team unit (because it surely wasn't built on attack...more on this later).

After last night's loss, several commentators called it: the end of the Cowboys' season. In hindsight, this has been developing over the last few years: you don't go from defensive specialists to making rookie mistakes overnight. This edition of the Tuesday Roast looks in greater depth at the rise and fall of the North Queensland Cowboys.

Despite enjoying considerable and very loyal support from much of Central and Northern Queensland, the Cowboys were a laughingstock for most of their first decade in the ARL/SL/NRL. Their efforts in securing big-name players or coaches were, for the most part, extremely ineffective. The ones they did sign failed to have much of an impact. Many a player or coach who had varying degrees of success at other clubs often disappeared off the rugby league radar when they played for the Cowboys. Does anyone remember the times when Steve Walters, Noa Nadruku, Jason Death, Dale Shearer, Paul Green, Noel Goldthorpe, Julian O'Neill, Tim Brasher, Robert Relf or Tim Sheens were Cowboys? I'm sure these guys try to forget their Townsville tenure every single day.

During these years in the rugby league wilderness (despite being endowed with far more "local" talent than any other team), their games were almost always on a Saturday night (never on Channel 9) and usually delayed until after much better and more entertaining games. How disrespected and ignored where they by people not residing in North Queensland? That great rugby league scholar, Glenn Morrison, left the Cowboys for what was a terrible Parramatta team, believing he was a better chance of playing State of Origin if only the selectors would see him play. Ok that's not strictly true, but the 'Siberia Cowboys' was a very appropriate moniker for such a team.

When the Cowboys' 2004 season started with 3 wins out of their first 9 games, another long losing season seemed certain. Then...a strange thing happened: the Cowboys started winning games. Almost 4 years ago to the day, the Cowboys defeated New Zealand in Auckland 28-26. It was their 5th win in 7 games and 13 points collected out of the last 16 available points.

They had quietly put together the core of a good team: Kevin Campion, Travis Norton and Paul Rauhihi were signed after playing important roles for the Warriors and Bulldogs respectively in their previous success, Matt Sing's evergreen career continued after leaving the Roosters and they (finally) had a promising crop of young players coming through (Luke O'Donnell and Steve Southern to form the nucleus of a great defensive back-row, Ty Williams and Josh Hannay who provided solid three-quarter play and, from the production line that brought you David Peachey and Preston Campbell, the speedy, side-stepping, risk-taker known as Matt Bowen).

However, playing in the halves for the Cowboys in Auckland in 2004 were David Myles and Chris Sheppard (Nathan Fien was the team's regular halfback that season). There might have been a less skilful, less talented, more sleep-inducing set of halves in rugby league history, but it's unlikely. It was unsurprising then that this team relied on hard work (at both ends of the field): they were never going match it talent-wise with many other teams.

When they lost to the Bulldogs, Roosters and Canberra in succession after the victory over the Warriors, the Cowboys went back to being Siberia's finest: people in the rest of the rugby league world went back to ignoring them. Then from mid-July, they won 8 out of 11 games and came this close to defeating the Roosters and making it to a grand final.

While Australia loves an underdog and rugby league, in particular, always seems to enjoy the battler overcoming the odds to succeed (look at the reaction everytime Souths wins a game), the general outpouring of joy throughout the rugby league as the Cowboys ground their way to win after win was, quite frankly, sickening. Their 10-0 snorefest over the Broncos - who, you may remember, were unable to do anything in a season once August started between 2001 and 2005 - was perhaps the most boring game ever played, yet people wanted more.

Sure, they were beating teams such as Brisbane, the Bulldogs and (almost) the Roosters: who doesn't like to see these high-flyers knocked down a peg from time to time? But you'd prefer the team to beat them to offer something - anything - to grab on to. If Matt Bowen didn't get the ball in broken play, a Cowboys' game was almost guaranteed to send you to sleep.

Never had a team been more in need of a playmaker when the Cowboys signed Feral Thurston for the 2005 season. With their large, intense team, the wilcard of Bowen and now the guidance of a potentially brilliant half in the Feral, anything looked possible for the Cowboys.

Yet they continued to serve up much of the same boring dross they had in 2004. With an eye on greater ratings in Queensland, Channel 9 was well and truly on the bandwagon at this point and was as excited about the Cowboys' dull play as anyone else.

The time had come. No longer could the Cowboys continue to lead such a charmed life; no longer could they continue to be praised for having one player with some semblance of athleticism in a team of automotons and have commentators everywhere describe them as 'exciting' or 'entertaining' (especially when the game's most recent innovators and entertainers - the Wests Tigers - were developing into a far more complete attacking team).

The Cowbores were born.

During the middle rounds of 2005, the quality of the Cowbores play slipped (partly due to the absence of Feral and Bowen (at times) due to State of Origin). They continued to be very boring, but this meant a still-strong defence and enough wins to remain near the top of the ladder.

They emerged from their slump in the latter part of 2005 and found form much like they did in 2004. Rugby League has about infinity payments left in a debt of gratitude to the Tigers: they played the Cowbores 3 times late in 2005 and thrashed them each and everytime, finally providing real rugby league supporters with some good memories of the Cowbores.

History will probably show that in 2006 the seeds of the Cowbores' downfall were planted. They started the season very strongly and defeated Newcastle in one of the best matches of 2006 (I know...I was shocked too) before their season basically fell apart. The letdown after exerting such a massive effort in Newcastle cost them a few games before the Origin period saw them lose 5 out of 6 games. When a sub-par effort at Penrith was followed by a serious injury to Feral, their season was gone and the realisation of their reliance on Feral had become apparent.

In 2007, they enjoyed yet another strong start before the mid-season malaise kicked in (and some large and very boring losses without Feral). They conceded 44, 64 (to the Anderson-led Roosters incredibly) and 58 points in a 6-week period: with or without Feral, this was not the same defensive team of 2004, 2005 and much of 2006.

Confirmation of the marked change in the Cowbores' attitude came with wins over the Bulldogs, Canberra, Penrith and the Bulldogs (again). Each of these games saw the Cowboys overcome gallant oppositions almost totally on the back of extremely timely attack from Feral, Matt Bowen or both. The Penrith game was not one for the defensive purists: Penrith repeatedly found holes in the Cowbores' defence and should have won, but Feral and Bowen used their time-honoured tricks to carve up the Penrith 'defence' and steal the win in extra time. The second Bulldogs game was even worse: the Cowbores had a huge lead (38-10) when Feral was interchanged. They were lucky the deficit was not closer: only Bulldogs' mistakes kept them from doing so. But when Feral left the game and the remaining 'Bores thought they had it won, the Bulldogs incredibly scored 4 tries in less than 15 minutes, almost snatching the win.

The fact that the Cowbores won these games only made things worse. Eventually, their luck ran out, when they faced a Manly team who were not going to beat themselves.

Perhaps the Cowbores' administration had seen the writing on the wall when they decided not to renew Graham Murray's coaching contract beyond 2008. His laissez-faire coaching style might have been effective early on (and when they had battle-tested veterans such as Campion, Norton and Rauhihi) but they had become lazy over 2006 and 2007 and Murray had to shoulder (no pun intended) a significant portion of the blame.

While the Cowbores had decided to move on from Murray before 2009, alarm bells should have been ringing at their painfully poor start to 2008: conceding over 30 points in their first 3 games, whilst not scoring over 20 in any of these games. They did beat Parramatta, the Dragons and New Zealand, but playing these teams early in the season and/or at home is virtually a 2-point freebie. Despite being favoured by a massive penalty count and a friendly schedule, they couldn't beat Melbourne: since then, elementary defensive lapses have directly contributed to losses against Souths, Cronulla and Newcastle.

The Cowbores are a mere shadow of their team from 2005 and early 2006. Feral Thurston could play after every type of injury there is, back up after an Origin game an hour ago and still fail to inspire and motivate his teammates.

Almost 4 years to the day after the Cowbores signalled their arrival as a contender in the NRL, the loss to Newcastle last night was the end: the end of the run of this Cowbores' team. Sure, Bowen will return, as will O'Donnell, as will Southern and others, but this team will not come close to ultimately succeeding again without some major restructuring (especially defensively) next season. If / when this happens, players such as Matt Hilder, Jarrod Mullen and Kurt Gidley will miss their gift tries the next time they visit Townsville. There is no doubting Feral Thurston's effort, but he only had to look at his opposition last night for an example of real, effective leadership. Danny Buderus had a brilliant game for Newcastle. His aging body meant he was unable to play as many minutes as he normally does, but his contributions (especially after the Cowbores came back to 18-all) were pivotal.

One final point: the Cowbores made a late change before last night's game, bringing Chris Sheppard in at five-eighth. The same Chris Sheppard who last played halfback for Siberia in 2004. The Cowbores have truly come full circle.

In other Round 14 games:
* Craig Bellamy proved he was not immune to the NSW curse of winning Game 1 of an Origin series at home and then wondering openly 'Is this really my team?' in Game 2. Special mention goes to Steve Turner, who put in a Colin Best-like performance in his first-and-last Origin game.
* Penrith looked a real threat to make it 7 wins from their last 8 away games as the underdog, but some unlucky video referee decisions and a host of injuries helped the Roosters win by a somewhat flattering 20 points. Still, after their capitulation against Manly last week, this was a positive night for the Roosters, especially with Anthony Minichello showing signs of returning to his best.
* Cronulla won their third game in a row at home and ended a bizarre streak of losing after the last 4 State of Origin matches in defeating New Zealand. New Zealand threatened to defeat Cronulla (like they did in Round 14 at Cronulla last season) for a while, but Cronulla finished strongly on the back of several tries from kicks to remain in equal first (before their traditional second-half meltdown...?)
* Brisbane was missing almost all their players with any semblance of attacking skill, but the injury-hit Raiders gave a very good account of themselves: they led 34-6 early in the second half. Canberra supporters didn't see any more tries from the home team, but did see the most useless halfback in the NRL - Shane Perry - run 50 metres for a try. Seriously, you wouldn't get a more stunned look from someone if you told them you saw a UFO.

Two other points from this game: the aforementioned Colin Best was one of the best players on the field. Could it be that centre is his position and that all the inconsistency, the stupid play and the lack of confidence was due to his playing on the wing?? Also, Josh Miller came up with perhaps the biggest hit of the season: a "shooter" which left Nick Kenny floundering.
* Parramatta thrashed the Tigers. Both teams have a habit in recent years of heading into this fixture with wildly diverging fortunes, but there is little doubt that Parramatta has a major psychological stranglehold over the Tigers.

See you next week.

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