North Queensland beat Canterbury 24-16 at an empty ANZ Stadium
If Canterbury fall in an empty stadium, will anyone in the NRL make a sound? It was a rugby league first on Thursday night and the Bulldogs were on the wrong end of it against the Cowboys.
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Chalk it down for the history books – the first match in 112 years of Australian rugby league to be played behind closed doors ended with North Queensland downing Canterbury 24-16 in front of a sea of empty seats at ANZ Stadium.
With the COVID-19 virus grinding the sporting world to a near total halt, this was literally the only game in town as the NRL followed through with their plans to keep the competition running.
With the restrictions on gatherings of more than 500 people expected to run for the next six months, this shapes as the first of many such matches to be played behind closed doors.
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THERE’S NOBODY HERE
Everybody who goes to NRL games regularly has been to a match where ANZ Stadium had 70,000 empty seats. But none of them have been to first grade games with near total silence, where the sounds of the hits and the talk on the field echoes through the cavernous arena.
The players did their best in regards to the intensity of the match. After the uncertainty of the week, they were probably just grateful to be out on the field at all, to do something normal in such an abnormal time.
Of course, there is nothing normal about playing a match with an attendance of 241 people – players included – down from 242 after Daily Telegraph journalist Nick Walshaw was denied entry due to a recent return from the US.
But as the NRL grimly ploughs ahead, desperate to keep the season going, and Todd Greenberg and Peter V’landys insist the survival of the competition itself may depend on it’s ability to keep putting on matches and filling television slots, this will soon become the new normal.
Maybe, if this keeps going for long enough, we can become used to the strangeness of the situation and the football itself can once again be the focus. But as it stands it is just too unusual, too much of a departure from reality, to notice much beyond what is missing.
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THE FOOTY ITSELF
The silent, eerie nature of the match will be what lives on in memory, but there was a game to be played, with the Cowboys scoring their first win of the season and condemning the Bulldogs to a second straight loss.
Canterbury struck first with a long-range try to Lachlan Lewis after some fine early work from Jeremy Marshall-King and Joe Stimson, but North Queensland replied with three straight tries to take a 22-6 lead into the break.
Coen Hess, Scott Drinkwater, Ben Hampton Jason Taumalolo all crossed in the first half, with Drinkwater’s try the pick of the bunch after he sliced straight through off a scrum from 30 metres out.
An early try after halftime to Renouf To’omaga gave the Bulldogs some hope, and although the visitors did not trouble the scorers again aside from a Valentine Holmes penalty goal and the Bulldogs narrowed the gap via a try to Christian Crichton on the bell, the Queenslanders always looked in control.
The Cowboys attack is still a work in progress, as is Drinkwater himself, but the five-eighth looked likely throughout, and gives the North Queenslanders some of the speed and creativity they sorely need.
Canterbury’s effort never waned, as ever, but they lack the firepower to respond to such a blitzkrieg as they faced in the opening stanza. The Bulldogs lack of attacking class is a crippling issue right now, and unless there is drastic improvement in the rounds to come it will be something that hamstrings them each and every week.
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THE KING OF TONGA
Even in a match as odd as this, the quality of Jason Taumalolo shone through.
The Tongan international is not just one of the best players in the world, he’s one of the great forwards of the modern era, and there is nobody in the rugby league world who can do what he does.
Taumalolo was totally dominant, accumulating a gargantuan 304 run metres from 25 runs, as well as try, which came after he threw a short ball to Francis Molo and backed up to take an offload and power over from close range.
Taumalolo does these things so often we have become accustomed to his quality, but we can never lose sight of how far ahead he is of everybody else.
Jordan McLean and Josh McGuire were also strong, as North Queensland’s forward pack totally asserted their dominance in the middle of the field – by the time the dust settled, the Cowboys outgained the Bulldogs 1584 metres to 1189.