Players shut critics down

COWBOYS players get sick and tired of hearing it. Now they hope the external noise will stop.

For more than a decade, North Queensland stars have absorbed the barbs. They’ve heard the whispers. The club can’t fire without Johnathan Thurston. It’s a one- man show. Stop JT and the Cowboys crumble.

The stats gurus have had a field day pointing out the Cowboys’ record when Thurston isn’t calling the shots, but the club’s fairytale surge into tomorrow night’s decider against Melbourne has changed everything.

Naturally, Cowboys players would prefer to have their injured champion on deck. But when he watches the grand final from the ANZ stands tomorrow night, the Cowboys will calmly roll on. There is belief without Thurston, and life beyond him.

“Surely now everyone can stop saying we’re a one- man band,” Cowboys fullback Lachlan Coote said.

“Look, JT is a champion player and sure we’ve had some lean runs without him, but we’ve shown now that we can consistently win big games without him. “It’s been a collective thing. “Michael Morgan has stepped up as a playmaker and I’m pretty pleased with the way I’ve stepped up my game.

“Like several of the guys, I made a conscious decision to be more of a leader knowing that the fullback these days is such a key position in any team. Without JT, we all needed to step up and be prepared to handle more pressure. I’m actually enjoying that responsibility.”

Leading into the finals, the Thurston curse seemed real. They had lost five times in six weeks without the Maroons ace, with several of the defeats directly traced to the lack of execution Thurston would have rectified if he was fit.

But a hard- fought, lastround loss to the Broncos in Round 26 convinced Coote they were on the cusp of a revival.

“I knew that once we got our game plan together that we could be all right in the finals,” Coote said. “I never doubted our ability to get it right.”