Spirit of Johnathan Thurston keeps North Queensland humming in NRL finals
A verily accepted wisdom heading into the finals series of this and every other NRL season is this: you must have your best people on the park to compete. You need your full complement fresh and fit and firing. You can’t head into big matches against big match opposition with guys on the bench from the feeder team, key men carrying injuries, and your halfback a 21-year-old Panthers reject who played junior footy for Turangawaewae RLC. That surely would not do.
Or would it? For are not the North Queensland Cowboys doing exactly that? On Saturday night they notched another big scalp, making off with the hopes and dreams of the high-flying Eels, a top squad with genuine affectations towards a grand final if not a premiership. And the Cows fairly torched them.
North Queensland won at ANZ Stadium because they kept turning up, making tackles, completing sets, playing super-solid, competitive rugby league. They are the Cows that can’t be killed, putting up a fight as they’re hauled off to the abattoir. There’s a funny old folk song called “Cows With Guns” about a cow that becomes a revolutionary who reads Che Guevara. And the chorus goes: “We will fight for bovine freedom / And hold our large heads high / We will run free with the Buffalo, or die / Cows with guns.”
Yet these Cows are without two of the game’s biggest guns: Johnathan Thurston and Matt Scott. It’s long been said of North Queensland they can’t win without Thurston. And it’s long been said because it’s long been borne out. Without Thurston their odds do a big switcheroo, as the Newcastle Knights’ did when Andrew Johns was out.
But that was then and this is now. And it seems enough of Thurston’s competitive DNA is milling about in the Townsville gene pond to keep the club humming. Like Thurston and Scott, these Cowboys of late 2017 just keep turning up, playing footy and competing. Thurston is lauded as a brilliant exponent of rugby league skills, and quite rightly but as Tony Montana said to Manny Ribera in Scarface: “It’s in the eyes, Chico, they never lie”. Thurston’s eyes say: “I will not be killed. I will just continue to play and throw all I have at this game of footy until the ref says to stop.” Thurston today is a presence in the sheds. The Cows are playing for him and like him.
And thus no longer can we dismiss North Queensland. It’s time they are acknowledged for who they are: genuine threats to this season’s Provan-Summons Trophy. Even without their superstar halfback and thundering prop forward, they have playersacross the park.
Consider Michael Morgan. The No7 is a running gun who plays both sides of the field. He is a traditional halfback and hot-footed fiveeighth. And again, look at his eyes: scan him for nerves, or angst or anything. Morgan gives you nothing. He appears not to care. Well, of course he cares. But his eyes tell you he’s just out there, playing, almost dispassionately, getting things done, brilliantly. For what Morgan can get done is very tasty indeed. He beat the Sharks with a field goal. He beat the Eels with speed. He plays for Australia. He’s not the king of North Queensland because that’s Thurston and before him Matt Bowen. But Morgan is a prince, perhaps. Or a duke, an arch-duke. One of them.
Another one of “them” is the thundering behemoth who plays “lock” (though roving third frontrower is probably more apt), Jason Taumalolo. There’s never been one like him: a 120 kilogram human being who can run really fast, step really well and do it for long, brutal, supereffective minutes. There’s plenty big blokes who can charge into the ruck all froth and bother for a run here or there. On Saturday night Taumalolo made 21 runs for 242 metres in 58 minutes. He’s King Kong tearing down the high street.
Elsewhere, Kyle Feldt is a brilliant finisher, one of those wingers who can leap outside the planes of the game’s boundaries, who can slam the ball down one-handed as the rest of his body is man-handled into Row A. Jake Granville dishes tidy pill from dummy-half and makes quality tackles. Lachlan Coote is a tidy mover, a third kicker and ballplayer. Te Maire Martin, said 21year-old of Turangawaewae, showed some lovely touches, running on the fifth, passing for Coen Hess to score. And Gavin Cooper, old Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, is still playing like he’s joined at Thurston’s hip; a tall, rangy threat on the edge.
Yet the Cows didn’t win through individual deeds. They won because, collectively, they just kept on playing, competing and hammering away. In the first half they completed 100% of their sets. In the second half it was 85%. They just broke down the Eels by throwing bodies at them in attack and defence. And they did it for 80 minutes until Parra crumbled. And in the coach’s box, on the big screen, Thurston and Scott turned to one another and ripped off a little chest-bump.
For the Eels, it’s a bitter pill to swallow. They went into the fixture having taken Melbourne Storm deep. They were feisty as usual and keen for the scrap. They’d come from everywhere for the scrap but they brought little in attack. Their two first half tries were breakaways, they lost prop Daniel Alvaro in the 5th minute and they made 13 errors. They were forced into four dropouts, and thus tiring repeat defensive sets. They missed 39 tackles and were out-played in most facets by a team of hombres no longer under the radar.
And thus, anyone spouting “conventional wisdom” should no longer be readily accepted. These Cows can beat anyone. These Cows have guns.