Time and defence vital for Cowboys
A GREAT northern wall has powered the Cowboys to a history-making start to the season, but the club hasn’t achieved anything yet according to their on-and off-field leaders.
The Cowboys have enjoyed a strong opening to their campaign, which has featured some dynamic attacking footy, but it was the way they held out Parramatta in the 35-4 thrashing of the Eels in Darwin two weeks ago that forced fans to cast their eyes north of Queensland’s capital.
Here were the Cowboys, who have finished no higher than 13th since falling to Melbourne in the 2017 grand final, successfully defending their line when previous North Queensland sides would have crumbled.
A first-half scare against the Knights last week threatened to ram home the fact they “hadn’t don’t anything yet”, but after leaking three four-pointers against a team that hadn’t scored a try in the previous 202 minutes, the Cowboys hit the reset button and produced another stunning second half.
Those two efforts have highlighted the club’s improvement without the ball, which we can reveal has led to the best defensive start in Cowboys history.
The team has conceded 113 points across their first nine games, a stunning rate of just 12.56 points per game, which has them just three points behind Penrith and Melbourne as the best defenders in the competition.
This is the also the first season in which the Cowboys have been in the top eight since 2016, when they led the competition on the back of their previous best defensive record (125 points).
North Queensland’s second-half defence has been rock solid, allowing just 37 points (4.1 per game) and keeping their opposition scoreless four times. The third-placed team has four straight wins for the first time since 2017, and are chasing a fifth consecutive victory when they face Wests Tigers in the last game of Magic Round at Suncorp Stadium on Sunday night.
But they haven’t done anything yet. Assistant coach Dean Young, who joined the club at the end of 2020, said the reason behind the improvement was simple: time spent with the players.
Todd Payten’s arrival sparked a total overhaul of how the Cowboys went about their business, but interruptions courtesy of Covid limited how much work they could actually do before the premiership campaign kicked off.
“The first year we came in, I think because of the Covid situation, we had the young guys in for three weeks before Christmas, and our older guys in for a week and a half,” Young said.
“When we started after Christmas, we had five weeks and then we were playing games.
“And that was with a whole new coaching staff, a whole new attack system, a whole defensive system, so we didn’t have a lot of time to get a lot of reps in.
“We spent a lot of last year, during the year really through necessity, trying to teach them how we want to do things, which is not ideal doing it in-season but we felt we didn’t have a lot of time.”
Looking back, it’s clear to see how disjointed the Cowboys of 2021 were, especially in the early stages of the season.
At the same time last year they had conceded 255 points, the fourth worst record in club history. The previous year they had leaked 253 points after nine rounds.
Young, who with Payten has instituted a new defensive structure, said time with the players had played a crucial role.
The other is personnel.
Rising stars like Jeremiah Nanai, Heilum
Luki and Tom Gilbert are “good movers” in defence and are another full pre-season into their NRL careers. Origin enforcer Coen Hess has thrived since a shift to the middle, while classy veterans Valentine Holmes and Peta Hiku have brought much-needed experience to the crucial centre positions.
Holmes said the squad knew they had points in them, but they had to address the defensive side of the game if they were to improve.
“We know how poor we were the past couple of years but we don’t want to be that team anymore,” Holmes said.
“Our main focus that whole off-season was just defence.”
Halfback Chad Townsend, who could be the buy of the season, echoed Holmes’s comments.
“Since I’ve been here it’s been really heavily focused, especially in our pre-season, about our defensive intent and effort,” he said.
“Todd and Dean have hammered home how important it has been.”
But, as Young said, they haven’t done anything yet.
The Cowboys have enjoyed a favourable draw to start the season with just three games against teams in the top eight: Parramatta (win), Brisbane and the Roosters.
They fell to 15th-placed Bulldogs in the first round, lost to the 10-placed Warriors in golden point extra time, beat 12th-placed Canberra twice, smashed the Titans, and came from behind to beat the lowly Knights last week.
Young puts the success so far down to the players, who have brought the right attitude and bought into the system.
“Me and Toddy haven’t made a tackle this season, the players have done all the tackling in pre-season and on game day, and their attitude has to be what’s commended,” Young said.
“We know we have a lot of work to do and we’ve done nothing so far.”