Latest North Queensland Cowboys NRL News
IT was perhaps the ultimate compliment in rugby league. Less than 15 minutes after a staggering loss, Craig Bellamy offered praise of the Cowboys that left Todd Payten lost for words.
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IT was perhaps the ultimate compliment in rugby league.
Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy had just watched his celebrated team defeated by 30 points, their worst defeat in more than a decade, by a North Queensland team no one could have predicted to do so before the season’s start.
Less than 15 minutes after the final whistle Bellamy was asked if he could recognise in that Cowboys performance traces of the Storm identity he had spent 20 years building.
“I didn’t see it in our blokes,” Bellamy replied.
“With all due respect, they just out-competed us tonight. They were smarter than us too, certainly with their attack.
“At the end of the day we knew we were going to lack a bit of cohesion … but that doesn’t stop you from competing and that’s where they were way superior to us tonight.”
For Bellamy’s opposite there could be no higher praise.
For more than a year Todd Payten has striven to inculcate values of competing for everything, of mental toughness and resilience in his Cowboys.
Payten has empowered his players to “play the right way,” a style of football synonymous with how Melbourne have dominated rugby league throughout Bellamy’s tenure.
Be relentless and aggressive; scramble in defence; keep fighting and make good decisions.
On the brightest stage of their season North Queensland delivered in emphatic fashion with a 36-6 thrashing of the Storm – something no team has done since Ben Barba’s Bulldogs in 2013. Payten paused for nearly five seconds when told of Bellamy’s endorsement of his football club’s performance.
The ultimate compliment?
“Yeah, absolutely,” he said.
“They’ve been the benchmark organisation for 10 years or more now. Competing is in their DNA and we worked really hard on that part of our game this off-season and the start of this season.
“To hear that I think is good for the lads.”
The Cowboys sit third on the ladder with the second best defence, conceding 11.9 points per match to trail only Penrith (11.6).
The next closest is Brisbane with 16.5 points per game.
The performance of the Cowboys through 11 matches this season has more than validated Payten’s appointment in the eyes of the North Queensland brass.
Chief executive Jeff Reibel believes the club has found its long-term mentor in Payten.
“Todd is our coach, there’s no doubt about that, and North Queensland is his home,” Reibel said.
“We surely would like him to be at our club for a very long time.” What set Payten ahead of a field of more than 20 applicants for the role, according to Reibel, was his passion for the people around him.
The Cowboys believed if given enough time the former premiership-winning prop could lead the club into the post-Johnathan Thurston era.
“It was the way he could make our players not just better players but better men,” Reibel said.
“When you go through the massive change that we did from that 2018-2019 period onwards, all of those things are going to take time. “Todd is a big believer in earning trust. Once
you’ve earned a person’s trust you have a right to be able to ask you to follow them into the trenches. There is no doubt those things are starting to come through now.”
A summer full of impromptu Castle Hill runs, tackling practice and other “curveballs” ran the risk of alienating a playing group but now appear to have formed the backbone of a top eight-worthy campaign.
Against the Storm the Cowboys bench was reduced to two with first-half knee injuries to colossus Jason Taumalolo and winger Kyle Feldt.
With 20 minutes to go there was just one player left on the bench, making the Cowboys’ 24-0 second half surge even more impressive.
The club is still awaiting results from scans on Taumalolo and Feldt but the prognosis is less optimistic for the wing stalwart.
With a short turnaround for Friday’s blockbuster against Penrith Payten said he would be surprised if Taumalolo recovered in time while Feldt “will be out longer.”
Why Billy can’t afford to ignore the Hammer
HAMISO Tabuai-Fidow helped save the Maroons from a State of Origin whitewash in 2021 but his chances of returning to the Origin arena next month are on life support after silence from Queensland coach Billy Slater.
Tabuai-Fidow’s Game III try on debut inspired Queensland to defeat New South Wales 20-18 but injury and the emergence of Scott Drinkwater have limited the 20-year-old to just 59 minutes on the field since Round Four.
The Hammer revealed he had heard nothing from Slater and his coaching staff since his injury, with the Origin series opener now less than a month away.
“I haven’t heard anything from them just yet,” the representative utility back said.
“I do want to get back in that arena. Last year playing that Game III was a hectic game to play in, just the atmosphere and being in that arena.
“Whatever position they want me to play I can go out there and give it 100 per cent.
“We’ve still got a couple of weeks to go so I just have to sit back and see what happens with the other selections.”
The obstacle Tabuai-Fidow faces is that opportunities to prove himself worthy of an Origin return will be difficult to come by.
Fullback Drinkwater leads all Cowboys in Dally M medal voting since breaking into the team in Tabuai-Fidow’s absence, while outside backs Murray Taulagi, Valentine Holmes and Kyle Feldt have all attracted Origin buzz of their own throughout North Queensland’s five-match winning streak.
Since recovering from his knee injury Tabuai-Fidow has been held to 14, 18 and 27 minutes off the interchange bench.
He has run for 270m and broken seven tackles in those 59 minutes of action, scoring one try, but is no closer to breaking back into the starting team.
“The boys at the Cowboys are all playing good footy,” he conceded.
“Val and just the whole back five, I give a wrap to them, they’ve been doing so good.
“Toddy (Payten, Cowboys coach) hasn’t told me too much, just to be ready to play whatever position I need to play out there and I felt like I’ve done that the last couple of weeks.”
A colossal fortnight faces North Queensland with a Saturday home match against the second-placed Melbourne Storm before travelling to Penrith to take on the ladder-leading Panthers the weekend after.
Facing teams laden with State of Origin calibre players will give Tabuai-Fidow chances to prove he has what it takes to reclaim a Maroons jersey.
The rugby league world’s eyes will be on these matches and the Hammer must make the most of his fleeting opportunities to do so.
Nanai try record gives Billy plenty to ponder
TEENAGE forward sensation Jeremiah Nanai is on pace to become just the sixth forward in 107 years of competition to score 15 tries in a season.
Through 10 matches the 19-year-old Cowboy has already scored seven tries to lead all NRL forwards.
Since the dawn of the NRL in 1998 only two players have scored 15 tries or more in the regular season: Manly’s Steve Menzies in 1998 (20) and Gold Coast’s David Fifita in 2021 (17).
If Nanai maintains his current strike rate of 70 per cent he will become the third.
That is a statistic certain to make New South Wales uncomfortable as coach Billy Slater finalises his Queensland squad.
The selection of tryscorers Fifita and Nanai on opposite edges could be devastating for defences.
Nanai revealed Slater has been keeping in close contact.
“He said just keep playing good footy, keep doing what you’re doing; the small bits from the one percenters and keep competing for the ball and stuff like that.
“I’m taking that all on board and it gives me motivation to hopefully pull on that jersey.”
All seven of Nanai’s tries have come from kicks, a feat he credits to an upbringing playing volleyball and basketball.
Originally published as Latest North Queensland Cowboys NRL News
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