After dominating NRL grand final and State of Origin, Queensland rules rugby league world

ENJOY the view Queensland. It’s not every year you get to sit on top of the rugby league world but while we’re at the summit, we’re not done with just yet.

ENJOY the view Queensland. It’s not every year you get to sit on top of the rugby league world. And what a view it is.

A decade of domination in the State of Origin series. Two Queensland teams in the greatest grand final ever. An epic win for the Cowboys.

A quirky, groundbreaking win by Ipswich in the interstate Cup.

The rugby league landscape is being painted maroon and it’s showing in all sorts of offbeat ways.

It’s got to the stage where Sydney newspapers had to stay relevant in grand final week by pointing out that several North Queensland players such as Lachlan Coote were “Sydney-raised.’’

Remember when it was the other way around?

Remember when we used to write about “Roma-raised’’ Arthur Beetson to claim a little piece of reflected glory when our local legend was doing great things for the Roosters or Parramatta all those years ago?

Queensland rugby league will remember 2015 as one of its greatest years while Sydneysiders have officially declared this a gap year in reference to the gap in their cabinet where their major trophies once sat.

This is it folks. The summit.

And we are not done with yet.

VOTE: Was it really best GF ever?

DOMINANT: How does JT’s 2015 rank?

PAIN: Hunt’s night goes from bad to worse

The Cowboys celebrate their triumph with fans at 1300 Smiles Stadium.

Within minutes of Johnathan Thurston sending North Queensland fans into orbit with his field goal, bookmakers had announced their markets for next year’s title and Brisbane and North Queensland were joint favourites.

So they should be.

Whatever Brisbane did this year they were expected to improve on next year with Anthony Milford now entrenched at five-eighth, Darius Boyd fully settled in at fullback and even coach Wayne Bennett more comfortable in his second season back.

But history tells us nothing can be taken for granted regards the future of both grand final teams.

This time last year South Sydney were being touted for global domination with reports saying they wanted to expand their brand in a Manchester United sort of way.

Someone forgot to tell them that a nice way of taking over the world would have been to at least make the top four this season, which they failed to do.

The Broncos spent most of this winter being underestimated. The good news is their aura is back. The challenging news is that so are the higher expectations that come with being a major force.

The Cowboys will also be a fascinating study next season.

Liberated from the burden of chasing their first title, they could become rugby league’s version of Jason Day after he won his major. A relentless powerhouse.

Or, like so many premiership teams, they may find it hard to return to planet earth.

Ipswich got the day off to a great start with victory over the Newcastle Knights.

All the right things will be said about focus and commitment but there’s a simple reason why there has been a different premier in each of the past 23 years. It’s just hard to go back to work once you have just won Lotto.

You tell yourself you are as keen as ever but the simple nuances of human nature tell us that the desperation to defend a premiership is never as great as it was to win it in the first place.

The Cowboys under-20, under-16, under-18 teams are all excellent outfits and one of the great spin-offs of the grand final win is that the stars of these teams will all want to be Cowboys.

It wasn’t always this way.

For many years Cowboys recruiters felt as unloved as door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman trying to sell the virtues of their club.

They went through stages where they took likely recruits fishing only to find out that a 70cm barramundi or a fat mud crab did not have the bargaining power they thought they did. Even mid-range players were hard to get.

When the club tried to lure halfback Brett Finch they could not even land an extended meeting with him, never mind a signature.

But those days are long gone.

The self-esteem of Queensland as a rugby league state has grown through State of Origin football.

Queensland’s demolition of NSW in State of Origin will never be matched.

All those pre-Origin decades when Queensland couldn’t win a chook raffle seem as if they were owned by a different state which, it must be said, Queensland was in those days.

The Cowboys story, in a sense, is the embodiment of Queensland’s own tale, from a timid start, to a difficult adolescence, to a more robust adulthood.

When they started 20 years ago, the Cowboys were whole hearted semi-professionals.

Dynamic halfback Laurie Spina used to cut cane on the family property before jumping in his car and driving for several hours to training, picking up forward Craig Teitzel from his butcher’s shop along the way.

When these players were asked to help prepare the ground for the first games of their first season they obliged without giving it a second thought. Country boys always get stuck in when they have to.

With just two wins in their first season they struggled to stay afloat but there was a certain spirit about them which lingers to this day.

In the hour after the grand final some long serving Cowboys fans snapped a photo of Spina with Matt Scott and the premiership trophy and it was difficult to see which man was happier with the win.

The Cowboys are now where they have wanted to be for 20 years of but it was never easy. It took them nine years to win 10 games in one season.

The late coach Graham Murray was not around to see the Cowboys triumph but his role should never be underestimated because his arrival gave the club the one thing it was lacking. Credibility.

His arrival meant that club could at least get through the front door of player agents and the Cowboys suddenly became a club with a serious future.

The future has arrived in all its glory.