Roosters v Cowboys: Remembering the 2004 preliminary final clash

FLASHBACK: It takes some game to better a 31-30 thriller with a desperate Hail Mary in the dying seconds. Somehow, the original Roosters-Cowboys finals clash does just that.

THE Cowboys have played the Roosters in the finals twice and both times things got right out of control.

The second time was in 2014, in the second week of the finals. North Queensland dropped the ball and everything else in the first half — they trailed 30-0 after as many minutes, fought back to go level at 30-all in the second stanza and eventually went down by a point and had a game-winning try disallowed in the final seconds. It might be the craziest game of the 21st century.

But the first time they met, in the 2004 preliminary final, the stakes were higher, just as they will be this Saturday night, and North Queensland were embarking on their only finals run that compares to this season’s incredible effort.

Watching the Cowboys this season without Johnathan Thurston has taken some getting used to — after all, North Queensland have had more seasons with Thurston (13) than without him (10).

But there was a time before Thurston, and for the most part it was bleak as a decade can be. North Queensland won three wooden spoons in their first six seasons and didn’t win 10 matches in a year until 2003.

The Roosters and Cowboys clashed in an epic preliminary final in 2004.

But in 2004, the Cowboys got it together. A win over the Tigers in Round 25 put them into the finals for the first time as they snuck into the playoffs in seventh spot.

Just making it would have been enough for North Queensland’s long-suffering fans. The Cowboys hovered from the 7th to 12th spot on the ladder throughout the season, they could not be expected to go on some epic playoff run. After all, these were the days of the McIntyre system and seventh played second in the first week of the finals.

The Bulldogs and the Roosters were the big men on campus in 2004. They were the premier rivalry in rugby league, bar none, and they hated each other’s guts. It was like Broncos-Cowboys, only with less XXXX. They were destined to meet in the grand final that season, they were streets ahead of anyone and everyone.

The Cowboys were supposed to turn up, get beat, go home and be proud of their first ever finals campaign. But it went another way.

In one of the great finals upsets and the finest match the Cowboys had played to that point, they upset the Dogs 30-22. Bowen scored a try and set up two others, but this will always be The Matt Sing Game.

Matt Sing celebrates a try for the Cowboys against the Bulldogs — their first ever finals win.

Sing is from a speck of a town in central Queensland called Winton and had become a star since his debut in the big leagues in 1993, playing for Penrith, Sydney City, Queensland and Australia before coming home in 2002. He is, by any measurement, one of the finest wingers ever to play this game and finished his career with 159 tries — only six players have ever scored more.

By 2004, Sing was only two years away from retirement. He didn’t have the speed of his younger days but he didn’t need it, because Matt Sing was cunning and clever and could finish a chance with the best of them.

He was a marvellous defensive player who was said to have saved as many tries as he scored, but in this match it’s his three tries that stand out. Poor old Matt Utai, who was as wide as he was tall, was schooled by Matt Sing the master.

Cowboys players are welcomed home after their upset win over the Bulldogs.

Sing flew through the air for three tries off cross-field bombs, with the final try sealing the upset win and announcing the Cowboys arrival to a rugby league world who had shunted them to the side for a decade.

This was their first free to air game since their debut match in 1995 — nobody knew about the Cowboys because nobody wanted to know.

They were wasting away in the sweltering end of the rugby league universe, stuck with a life of 9:30 delayed matches of a Saturday on Fox Sports and making up the numbers by propping up the rest of the competition, but not anymore.

The ten years in the wilderness were over, the Cowboys were here goddamn it.

Next was Brisbane, big brother, who the Cowboys had never beaten. Not once in 16 meetings from 1995 had North Queensland done it. They’d had two draws but that was it — most of the time the Broncos belted them.

Due to the vagaries of the McIntyre system, the match was scheduled to be played at the Sydney Football Stadium, which would have been wrong in every way possible, and Brisbane took the magnanimous stance of allowing the match to be switched to Townsville.

Dairy Farmers stadium was packed to the rafters. The locals camped overnight to get tickets. If the Cowboys couldn’t beat Brisbane here and now, they might never have done.

And they did. They drew deep on reserves of toughness perhaps they never knew they had, bashing the hell out of the Broncos and being bashed in turn. In the end, it was 10-0 shutout — journeyman five-eighth David Myles pounced on a Bowen chip kick in the first half — but it wouldn’t mattered if they’d won 1-0.

The first win over the Broncos would always be a highlight in the history of the club, but to do it in a final, at home, in the biggest match the club had ever played is almost too cinematic to be real. Until the 2015 grand final, it was the greatest and most important win in North Queensland’s history.

Where were the Roosters when all this was going on? While the Cowboys were becoming North Queensland’s messiahs, the Roosters had claimed the minor premiership and brushed aside a badly overmatched Canberra team in the first week of the finals. This was to be Brad Fittler’s last season, and the Roosters, battle-hardened from their 2002 premiership and 2003 grand final defeat, were absolutely red hot.

While they may not have ended up with another title, the 2004 Roosters were close to the best Tricolours side Ricky Stuart ever coached. Fittler was still one of the best players in the league but Anthony Minichiello was hitting his apex, Brett Finch nearly won the Dally M and the forward pack was truly brutal, with Adrian Morley, Craig Fitzgibbon, Luke Ricketson and Michael Crocker leading the way.

Stuart’s Roosters team’s were incredibly conditioned and built their success on unyielding, powerful, sustained tackling coupled with suffocating line speed. Packed with star power, imperious and unlovable to outsiders, they could not have been more different to the plucky, battling Cowboys.

Paul Rauhihi on the charge for the Cowboys against the Roosters in 2004.

The Roosters could play gorgeous football, but did so in a methodical, almost disdainful way, while North Queensland seemed to brim with instinct and play wherever the wind blew them.

Even the coaches were polar opposites. Graham Murray, who had lead the Roosters to the 2000 grand final, had previously steered Illawarra to their first finals series in 1992. He was a career coach, who spent years piloting reserve grade teams before getting his chance at the top. Stuart had only been retired for a year when he was appointed to lead the Roosters in 2002, guiding them to a premiership in 2002 and while Murray was endearing and seemingly knockabout, Stuart was intense, focused, and emotional a ball of rage that was always channelled towards victory.

Canterbury rebounded from their opening week loss and awaited in the grand final, and the Roosters were favourites for the prelim, deservedly so. Early on, their victory seemed like an inevitable tide the Cowboys were furiously but futilely trying to stop. Ryan Cross’s opening try could have been the breaking of a damn, but North Queensland rallied and replied through Paul Bowman.

Anthony Minichiello flies high for the Roosters against the Cowboys in 2004.

Some penalty goals kept the Roosters ahead and they led 10-6 at the break and the second half evolved into a back and forth battle for the ages. Ty Williams crossed first to level the scores but the Roosters took the lead again when Fittler charged onto a pass from Finch to score his final try in first grade. It was a stellar performance from Finch, who was in the midst of his best season in the NRL.

But that lead only lasted five minutes. North Queensland shifted left, out to Josh Hannay and he seemed to be corralled over the sideline by a horde of Roosters defenders. A desperate Hannay launched the ball back inside, more on hope than anything else and because this was a team, and a club, who were built on hope the ball found Williams, and he dived over for his second. Hannay kicked true from the sideline and it was 16-all, the inevitable grand final plans of the Roosters and the impossible grand final dream of the Cowboys on the line.

Both teams had chances to win it in the final 20. North Queensland halfback Nathan Fien had a field goal shot shave the uprights but Finch made no such mistake when he drilled one through with five minutes remaining.

Another Fitzgibbon penalty gave the Roosters some breathing space, and a final Cowboys attack fell apart on the siren.

The Roosters won 19-16, and the great North Queensland run was over.

A Brett Finch field goal helped the Roosters get home against the Cowboys.

The Roosters lost to Canterbury 16-13 the next week in a match that did not represent the heat and quality of the two teams or of their rivalry.

Johnathan Thurston joined the Cowboys the next year, won a Dally M, lead them to a grand final and everything about that club changed forever.

But there was a time before Thurston, a time when North Queensland surged their way out of the rugby league doldrums and nearly scrapped their way to top. Until this season, those three games in 2004 were the only finals matches the club ever played without him.

Originally published as Roosters v Cowboys: Remembering the 2004 preliminary final clash