NO FINALS TALK AS COWBOYS SNAP LOSING STREAK
COWBOYS GET THEIR MOJO BACK
THE Cowboys are back in the saddle following Saturday night’s 26- 14 win over the Gold Coast Titans at 1300SMILES Stadium.
While not the most convincing of North Queensland performances, it broke a five- game losing streak and injected much- needed confidence into the hard- pressed playing group.
The win has come at a cost, however, with versatile forward John Asiata facing a 10- week recovery after suffering a suspected pectoral tear.
THEY’VE got the monkey off their backs, but Cowboys coach Paul Green has refused to start talking about his team’s finals prospects following Saturday’s crucial 26- 14 win over the Gold Coast Titans.
The Cowboys finally gave the 12,885 fans at 1300SMILES Stadium something to cheer about in an admittedly scrappy encounter as they snapped a five- game losing streak.
Last year’s grand finalists still have plenty of hard work ahead given no team in the NRL era has made the decider from a 2- 5 start, but Green insisted the Cowboys had to keep their focus on more short- term goals.
Green praised the more confident performance from his players and he encouraged them to build on that against the Raiders in Townsville this Saturday rather than stressing about what it would take to play finals.
“We can’t worry about the end of the year. We start thinking about that, you forget about next week,” Green said.
“We put ourselves in a position that probably wasn’t the best start that we would’ve hoped for, but if we start thinking we’ve got to do this for September, you forget about what’s most important and that’s next week for us.
“That’s got to be our attitude for the rest of the year and the end will look after itself.”
There were few chances for either team to shine in a frustrating contest with 23 penalties while the Cowboys also made 12 errors, but Green felt his side had better handled those setbacks than in previous weeks.
“We’ll certainly get a lot of confidence out of that which has been probably the issue,” Green said.
“The first win was never going to be our best ever game … but when we did have those errors we were doing it with plenty of energy and urgency which probably hasn’t been there.
“They got into the game and we saw the real Cowboys, I suppose.
“It’s still a long season and we’ve still got plenty of work to do, but it was a great step in the right direction.”
Cowboys co- captain Matt Scott felt the biggest improvement against the Titans was their effort as they took the lead over a team for the first time in more than 400 minutes of football.
“It just felt like we had more control of the game,” Scott said.
“We’ve tried really hard over the last five or six weeks, but I think the effort across the board was much better and that showed with our energy in defence.
“We came up with a couple of silly penalties and errors as well – probably too many errors – but our defence off the back of it was controlled.
“We’ve definitely got it in us to improve on that and string a couple of wins together.”