All endeavour, no victory
LACK OF POINTS WASTES COWBOYS’ FAST START
Round 6 saw us come up against a desperate Parramatta side at Commbank Stadium.
A 5.30pm kick-off time in Sydney meant conditions were going to be much cooler than the previous week against the Titans and something I think we were all looking forward to.
We started the game extremely fast and, although we showed some early signs of illdiscipline, created many tryscoring opportunities.
These came through hard running and some really nice ball movement as we moved the ball out wide to our danger men.
Unfortunately, the opportunities we created early in the game failed to amount to points – considering how well we were moving the ball around not scoring was extremely disappointing and frustrating.
It seemed like we were so close to cementing a really solid foundation in the first half but in the end it was just not meant to be.
The first half was very stopstart with many decisions going up to the video ref or being reviewed.
In my opinion, that suited the Parramatta team.
We headed into halftime down on the scoreboard but still with a lot of confidence that we could come out and execute our game plan in the second half.
Our coaches were calm at halftime and reiterated that we needed to be more disciplined without the ball and to maintain the focus on ourselves and the energy that we can create with our style of play.
When playing away it can sometimes feel that when the momentum is against you, it’s extremely hard to get back.
Unfortunately for us, the second half didn’t pan out the way we would have liked.
To Parramatta’s credit, they hung in there and made it a stop-start slog.
We were able to rally late by throwing the ball around when Drinky, in his 100th NRL game, scored a long-range try from nothing.
It was overall a really disappointing result for us after what has been a great start to the season.
If you had been in the sheds after the game you would have seen the looks on the player’s faces that said “we let that one slip away” – they are the hardest ones to take.
We must take lessons from the weekend’s game and understand that when the momentum is against us we need to fight hard to win it back.
See you at the game.
CT
Chad Townsend is co-captain of the North Queensland Cowboys.