North Queensland Cowboys beat Wests Tigers 8-0 in tight tussle at Campbelltown Stadium

THE case for a stand-alone State of Origin series was made loud and clear with the Tigers slumping to a surprise defeat in a Cambelltown snoozefest. .

TIGERS V COWBOYS

THE NRL was reduced to ruin on Saturday night with the Tigers and Cowboys sending rugby league to sleep with a 77th minute match winning try to North Queensland the only thing that stopped the match from becoming lowest scoring game since 1982.

With Wednesday night’s match between NSW and Queensland last night robbing NRL fans of a showdown between Johnathan Thurston and Robbie Farah, the Cowboys fell home in an eight point snooze-fest that Tigers coach Jason Taylor said was “ugly to watch’’ and would have left Wests Tigers fans feeling “pretty crap’’.

In fact all rugby league fans were feeling the pain after Antonio Winterstein scored in the dying minutes to avoid making the match one of the five lowest scoring games in rugby league history.

Yep ... Since 1908.

The case for a stand alone State of Origin series was made loud and clear on night devoid of NRL stars and full of empty seats.

Just 8,267 turned out to Campbelltown Stadium.

Just a night after a depleted South Sydney beat the Parramatta Eels in a low scoring slugfest, the Cowboys and the Tigers turned rugby league into a one out game of safety first football that would have been the lowest point scoring game since the Bulldogs and Newtown ground out a nil-all draw 33 years ago.

“I don’t know if it (makes a case for a stand alone State of Origin series),’’ said Taylor.

“Right now that question is one I don’t want to try and answer. We have some challenges here and we need to be head down bum up to fix them. It was a dour game. A very dour game. But right now the message to our fans is it is not as bad as it looks.”

Luke Brooks is tackled.

Only 8,267 fans turned out to watch the match that was robbed of Origin stars Thurston, Matt Scott, James Tamou, Michael Morgan, Robbie Farah and Aaron Woods.

The Cowboys broke the scoreless deadlock in the 29th minute when Ethan Lowe slotted a penalty goal that looked certain to be the only points of the match until the scrappy at the death try that sealed the Cowboys 8th straight win and took them to the top of the table.

Taylor admitted Origin was partly to blame for the low scoring game that was slammed on social media.

“I think tonight’s game would have kept people uninterested because of the scoreline,’’ Taylor said.

“But you have to remember the quality of players that were not out there tonight. It was an important factor.’’

Winning coach Paul Green admitted the game was boring but he didn’t care one bit.

Martin Taupau runs into Lachlan Coote.

And why would he after the Cowboys stormed to a rare away win without Thurston.

Taylor also played down the loss claiming that the toothless Tigers were on a defensive mission.

“It was a dour game,’’ Taylor said.

“A very dour game. And for us, in the end, to not score any points was really disappointing.

“That is not what we have come to know from the Wests Tigers over the years and we are really disappointed about that but at the same time we are working really hard to change the way this team plays because we are coming from a long way behind in terms of matching it with the best teams in the comp. One try against us was a major positive and that is what we are working towards. We are on the path to toughening up as a team. Dour? Maybe it was tough.’’

NORTH QUEENSLAND 8 (A Winterstein try E Lowe 2 goals) bt WESTS TIGERS 0 at Campbelltown Sports Stadium. Referee: Matt Cecchin, Gavin Morris. Crowd: 8,267.

Re-live the action in the blog below:

Originally published as North Queensland Cowboys beat Wests Tigers 8-0 in tight tussle at Campbelltown Stadium