Welcome to the Bovine Bulletin, a regular, independent newsletter about the North Queensland Cowboys.

After the first two games of the season, I was prepared to come in to your inbox and say, “I told you so.” I may still do that later in the season. For now, the North Queensland Cowboys have shown themselves not to be one of the four worst teams in the competition and that ain’t nothing.

The Titans and Dragons are definitely down there and they were both comprehensively beaten by the Cowboys. The rest of the bottom four would be two of Melbourne, Manly, Redcliffe, Parramatta or Canberra, depending on which flogging you most recently happened to catch in Vlandoball II: The Re-Vlandoing.

The win over the Storm was by far the most impressive line on the Cowboys’ 2026 resume. It may prove not to count for much by season’s end, given the Storm’s own travails, and it doesn’t really make up for 2017, but it is something.

The primary thing you’d have to be happy about was the perseverance. Down 16-10 at halftime and then conceding immediately after half time would see most teams give up. When Will Warbrick scores his fourth try, potentially ending a bubbling comeback, to see the Cowboys keep at it and eventually prevail is at the very least encouraging. To do it while Jahrome Hughes is flapping his arms about is gravy.

The Cowboys, and Todd Payten, might be up against it but they haven’t quit.

St George Illawarra are a complete basketcase on the field and off the field seem to be either considering dropping “St George Illawarra”, or possibly “Illawarra” if you believe some of the stupider people on the internet. While they only put up the defence of a particularly well paid reserve grade team, the Dragons game allowed the Cowboys to flex their attacking muscles for the first time in a while. We haven’t seen Purdue slice through the line quite that easily, quite that frequently, in 2026. In contrast to the Vegas game, Dearden and Drinkwater both looked like they had something like fresh ideas.

As I said in my recap on Wednesday, that gives you an idea of the team’s floor and it ain’t that flawed. The defence seems like a perpetual work in progress but scoring points with a bad defence is better than not scoring points with a bad defence.

Consider the big picture. With the poor results of last year, and the associated clearing out of assistant coaches, it has been very clear that Todd Payten’s time at Railway Estate is on its last legs. It is not beyond saving but the minimum for Payten to keep his job would have to be a finals appearance. A 3-2 start is a good way to get there.

The counter is that Payten’s teams always have a purple patch of form. It may be that this year’s patch coincided with the easiest part of the draw, playing two of the worst teams in the league and catching the Storm with their pants down. Only more games is going to prove or disprove that. A Broncos team hitting its stride, facing the defending premiers at a full Suncorp, could hardly provide a better test. It is time for North Queensland to decide what kind of season its going to have.

Let’s end on a bright note:

The North Queensland Toyota Cowboys have agreed to a four-year contract extension with Jaxon Purdue, running through the end of the 2030 NRL season.

Born and bred in Mackay, Purdue was identified later in his schoolboy career, signing with the club on an Elite Emerging contract in Year 11 in 2022. He would quickly emerge as one of the most elite talents to come through the Cowboys Academy Programs in the past decade.

Good signing, good player. I was wrong about the move to five-eighth, so I hope the next coach can figure out what to do with him. Or just teach him to tackle.

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When a team struggles, the first step is to tweak the roster. The second is to turn over the roster. The third is to re-evaluate the coach, then the CEO and then the board. During Todd Payten’s tenure, the Cowboys have turned over the roster with at least two big clean outs and results have not meaningfully improved. Instead of sacking him last year, North Queensland opted to replace the assistant coaches. This interim step leaves Payten, and a metaphorically significant length of rope, solely responsible for this year’s result.

I will acknowledge that it is an even numbered year and perhaps the Cowboys draw special inspiration from our Olympic representatives to pull themselves to the top of the non-quite-contending pile but while it is narratively convenient, it does seem like a long bow to draw. The Cowboys hierarchy have waited for proof 2022 was no fluke, even though the accumulation of evidence - the ‘21, ‘23 and ‘25 seasons weighed against the ‘22 and ‘24 seasons - make it seem like it almost certainly was.

The pattern of Payten’s tenure has been bad-good-bad-ok-bad. That might look like he sometimes has good teams and sometimes had bad ones, but I think it is reflective that you don’t really know what you’re getting month-to-month. Some years those dice rolls add up to a bunch of wins and some years, it doesn’t. Call it the craps theory of the North Queensland Cowboys.

The upside, and perhaps the only reason that Payten still has a job, is that the Cowboys seem to have gotten past the absolute bottom of the barrel post-Thurston era. The best result in the late Paul Green era from 2018 to 2021 was 13th. The worst result of Payten’s cycle of 2022 to 2025 was 12th. That is progress but hardly satisfying and does not indicate steady growth towards the ultimate goal. Beating the Tigers and the Titans while the Broncos win the title and butcher the World Club Challenge is not where this club wants to, or should, be.

Jeremiah Nanai exploded for Samoa before destroying his shoulder and missing the first ten weeks of this season. He was not the only one to have an interesting representative offseason. Even Reuben Cotter played noticeably better and harder for the whole of Queensland than he did for just the northern part. If you contrast these individual players’ lack lustre club performance against their lustrous representative performances, and wonder why the discrepancy exists, then we might start looking at the variables.

There are more club games. The jerseys are different colours. Home grounds and the vibes of different team mates might put players in a better frame of mind. But a lot of that, directly and indirectly, comes back through the coaching regime and the man who is paid the money to take responsibiltiy for the performance of that regime is Todd Payten.

I hope this helps you clarify any feelings of frustration or powerlessness

Naturally, Payten is responsible for the results but does not actually play the games. That comes down to the roster. I am developing a theory of what constitutes a “Cowboys signing” and I think there are three types.

There are your Scott Drinkwaters, Reece Robsons and Tom Deardens. Good players who were surplus to requirements at their respective clubs who have found at home in Townsville. Even Johnathan Thurston, the Brisbane kid at the Bulldogs, fits this description. Reed Mahoney, from the Sunny Coast hinterland1, is another and while I personally think he’s a little shit, North Queensland could hardly have done better to replace Robson from the options available.

There are your Reuben Cotters (when he can be bothered), Heilum Lukis and Jake Cliffords, who are locals and probably never wanted to go anywhere else, even if in Clifford’s (and Dearden’s) case, they did. That’s Matt Bowen and Kyle Feldt. These guys are like shooting fish in a barrel.

The most recent generation of young men brought through the Cowboys system have had been a mixed bag. Purdue is likely a success and likely a defensive liability. Laybutt, perhaps not so much after a disappointing return from an ACL. Chester might have something. Derby is going to have to leave and make it big elsewhere in the grand tradition of many ex-Cowboys. Duffy sucked and his presence at Brisbane remains inexplicable. Not one of them could make a single yard over replacement and none of them are forwards. No one has signed Dudley Dotoi yet and it drives me nuts.

Finally, there are the mysteries. Why did the Cowboys sign John Bateman? There were injury problems in that position, agreed, but was a guy barely hanging on in Super League the best the Cowboys could do? While Bateman did maybe ok sort of, Chad Townsend made more sense at the time and I openly laughed at that one.

Which brings us to a very low stakes signing but one with significant “guuhhh?” factor: Matthew Lodge.

Lodge played in 12 games for the Sea Eagles in 2025 after agreeing to a one-year deal late in the pre-season.

Lodge adds significant depth and experience to a Cowboys forward pack, which will be without young stars Jeremiah Nanai and Griffin Neame to start the 2026 season.

“We are fortunate to be able to secure someone of Matt’s experience this late in the pre-season,” Cowboys General Manager of Football Micheal Luck said.

There is a reason - many, in fact - he was available. This is his sixth club. Lodge might pan out and give the Cowboys a solid six weeks but that is the best case scenario. You’re telling me Lodge provides better cover than keeping Marly Bitungane or giving Josh Stuckey a proper go? Come now.

This kind of signing is almost a signature Cowboys move. It ostensibly solves a problem - bolstering a saggy middle - but is left field enough - a guy who played 12 matches last year - while lacking obvious quality - Lodge’s best years are well behind him - that it makes you wonder about the guys in charge and if we won’t be doing some re-evaluation of their place in this organisation down the track.

Soni Luke makes more sense:

“With the departure of Karl Lawton, we had an open spot in our roster for an experienced dummy-half to complement Reed Mahoney and Xavier Kerrisk,” Cowboys General Manager of Football Micheal Luck said.

That’s more like it. I can be complimentary about complementarity.

Speaking of Lodge-like monsters:

North Queensland have denied any interest in signing former NRLW half Maddie Studdon for 2026 after the club was mentioned in a court hearing on Wednesday for a domestic violence-related stalking charge.

To be clear, Studdon is the one accused of stalking of her former partner. This lone charge justifies everything negative I’ve written about her since 2018. For the Cowboys, that you have to deny it in the newspaper (albeit, for reasons probably related to a later story) is not a good sign!

Structure

Even for me, organisational charts are not the most interesting thing in the world but the Cowboys have come in with a beauty:

David Myles has been appointed as Chairman of the Football Club board, while Micheal Luck has been promoted to CEO - Football.

Cowboys premiership-winning captains Johnathan Thurston and Matthew Scott along with 229-game NRL veteran Brent Tate join Myles on the Football Club Board.

The Football Club leadership announcements follow the implementation of a new structure across all Cowboys operating entities – Football Club, Cowboys Leagues Club, Cowboys Community Foundation and NRL Cowboys House – consolidating into a group entity titled NQ Cowboys Limited.

The Cowboys group, which includes the football team, the leagues club and some community foundations, have created a nested, byzantine structure of boards, presumably in an attempt to clearly demarcate zones of responsibility and improve leadership, cohesion and accountability across the organisation.

For the football club, because we are not concerned with NRL Cowboys House, does this achieve that goal? The theory of the board is to get a bunch of people with similar domain knowledge but differing experiences to lend that experience to the high level strategic decision-making of an organisation. While Myles, Thurston, Scott and Tate have had varying post-playing careers that might have let them accumulate that experience, and their playing careers lend them a great deal of credibility, the four of them forms a very small board (most football clubs have boards that are five to nine people) and is not particularly diverse (most clubs have boards with non-athletes and women). For contrast, I’ve talked about who is on the Chiefs and the Bears boards recently. Are you telling me they asked Little Robbie Katter and he said no?2

Putting aside the frailties of people and the temptations of power that can send this theory askew in reality (cf: Wests Tigers), diversity is important. A group of accountants will make different decisions to a group of lawyers or engineers or marketing and comms people because they have different backgrounds. If you take a little bit from each, the board should be able to form a more well-rounded perspective on strategy for the organisation. A lack of diversity is prone to groupthink. That the CEO is cut from the same cloth makes the situation worse.

This is not to suggest that more people from other backgrounds won’t be invited to the football club board or this is doomed to failure but it is a deviation from the norm. I usually expect negative effects of this kinds of decisions to take years to make themselves felt but the Cowboys do tend to be an accelerant.

Affiliations

We have already talked about this but for the sake of completeness:

The North Queensland Toyota Cowboys have finalised its Affiliate Club Agreements through the 2028 season.

The Northern Pride and Mackay Cutters remain as Cowboys feeder clubs, while the Townsville Blackhawks return to the fold for the first time since 2023.

As part of the agreements, the Cowboys will send players to all three feeder clubs from its NRL squad to play in the Queensland Cup.

I cannot express how big a waste of everyone’s time the Kyle Laybutt scandal ended up being. Just because we ended up back where we started does not meant this was a storm in a tea cup. Relationships and careers across the North have been damaged by this ineptitude.

Perhaps we should just be grateful that the status quo has returned for the time being and we’ll deal with the Young Guns mark 2 in a couple years’ time. If nothing else, it will give us some more content for future Bovine Bulletins.

The Cowboys and affiliates are buddy-buddy again…

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Dibb’s on Knights

Kirra Dibb returns to Newcastle:

The nib Newcastle Knights are pleased to announce Kirra Dibb has signed a 3-year NRLW contract to return to the Club until at least the end of 2028.

Dibb, 28, brings a halves skillset, leadership and experience to the Knights squad, having represented the Jillaroos, NSW Blues and Indigenous All Stars, along with almost 50 appearances since her making her NRLW debut in 2019.

The last season had some odd selection choices and Dibb seemed well out of her usual form, so that would suggest some underlying tension. The release and signing by the Knights then makes some sense, if it is unfortunate.

Also unfortunate, Tahlulah Tillett retired at the ripe old age of 27. This leaves the Cowboys without both of its 2025 starting halves coming into the 2026 season.

This is a team that had a good run and made finals that now finds itself in the middle of a rebuild. Krystal Blackwell left for Canberra and China Polata went to Cronulla. While there have been signings and extensions, who is going to play in the halves?

Whitfeld, Manzelmann and the forward pack are good assets to have, and Ricky Bobby Henry has been extended, but without a helmswoman (preferably two), it could get grim in 2026.

And don’t forget they’re all moving to Cairns in 2027!

Mr Reibel said he accepted the Cairns public’s cynical perception of how the Cowboys’ timing of expanding its presence in the Far North coincided with investments and the introduction of Papua New Guinea into the NRL.

Gee, I wonder why anyone would think that?

The Cowboys remain in the market for a Group CEO.

Ah!

Notes

• Signings: six Dev List contracted players, (James) Walsh

• Extension: Bree Chester

• Departures: Karl Lawton (Super League)

• How Will The Cowboys Use Jaxon Purdue? Typically insightful analysis from Jason.

• Dallas Cowboys keep NRL’s North Queensland at arm’s length during Vegas trips

• In case it wasn’t clear earlier this week or from this preview, I do not have a great deal of confidence that the Cowboys will do well this season. I have been wrong before and will be again. Draw your own conclusions.

Welcome to Bovine Bulletin, a monthly newsletter about the North Queensland Cowboys.

I try not to write these things without putting some calories into it but I find it hard, looking back on the North Queensland Cowboys’ season, to say anything other than: well, there you go.

Even removed at a bit of distance from the end of season, and the last issue of the Bovine Bulletin, nothing worthwhile has resolved into clarity. It was a 9-14-1-ass season with the league’s second worst defence, conceding 28.5 points per game. The results, the vibe, the stats all point in the same direction, delivered with the smirk of a poorly written superhero’s dialogue, of That Just Happened.

You might be able to forgive that if the Cowboys were able to generate Dolphins-level points scoring but that resolutely did not happen. There was a shuffle in the halves that didn’t make things better and by the time it was shuffled back again, the season was over and Purdue’s early season superman impersonation had more than a touch of kryptonite about it by the end.

A slow start followed by victories over the Raiders and the Panthers1 in successive weeks looks strange now and won’t make any more sense with time. As usual, the superior form only lasted five or six weeks, then the Cowboys tapered away from looking like one of the best in the league to only managing to beat the really bad teams.

That hot streak of six weeks is most vexing. In the same way that Justin Holbrook’s characteristic trait with the Titans was giving up unloseable leads, the superpower of Todd Payten’s Cowboys is that they can get it together for six weeks. Sometimes, they build on that and some luck of the draw to work to a decent finals finish. Most of the time, the purple patch is the high point of the season. At the risk of making the plane out of the black box, why not just do that all the time?

The price for the severe underperformance has been paid by the assistant coaches, who have all been cleared out while Payten retains the full support of the board, and in the grand tradition of the North Queensland Cowboys, somewhere between five and a dozen fringe roster players have been moved on after briefly being touted as the next big thing. They make way for the next generation of young hopefuls to be milled by the Cowboys grinder before leaving and (sometimes) finding success further south.

The changes may pay off but unless that 28.5 points conceded per game comes down under 20, none of it is going to matter. I subscribe to the belief that defence is primarily coaching. It requires a clear understanding of what everyone is supposed to be doing, so they can act as a coherent unit, all of which screams middle management. Whether that’s up to the assistant put in charge of defence or the head coach, the latter will be held accountable for the team’s performance one way or another.

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The nascent Cowboys women’s program delivered in 2025. Whether you thought that maybe they should have delivered a finals win as well, is a question of degree of success but not of kind. To have been in the competition for three seasons and now be the fourth best team in a field of twelve, having eclipsed the Titans, is a good result, however you slice it.

Crushed by the Roosters, 30-0, and by the Broncos, 50-4, is not what you want. Being handled by the Knights is fine, really; they won two titles not that long ago. The Cowboys probably shouldn’t have lost to the Warriors but you can blame the conditions for spitting up a weird result. Splitting a series with the Sharks, although losing the more important of the two fixtures, and beating the crap out of the rest of the league is a season well done. If nothing else, you gotta start somewhere.

The move of Jakiya Whitfeld to fullback and the shuffle of Fran Goldthorp to wing made both players more effective. Tallulah Tillett and Krystal Blackwell, two local girls, delivered on their promise. The pack looked imposing enough and operated with sufficient skill, strength and speed to keep North Queensland comfortably on top of most games. Makenzie Weale made the jump from the bench to starting in the Origin arena and while that didn’t pan out series-wise, it shows the tier of quality that the team is mixing with.

Perhaps most surprisingly was the lack of reliance on Kirra Dibb. The star playmaker was out of sorts for most of the season, even being seemingly dropped for union convert Rosie Kelly to partner Tillett. The halves were more of a revolving troika through the year but Tillett and Dibb showed enough that the Cowboys don’t need to worry if Kelly doesn’t pan out and/or returns to union. That’s an extremely healthy sign.

Unlike the men’s side, there’s a long way to go until season 2026 commences. There’s a big lump of the second tier of the roster coming off-contract and how the next season pans out will depend on who gets re-signed, who gets turfed to the Pride and if any new blood comes in. The Titans are active but we haven’t heard much from the Cowboys yet.

A unique twist in the tail is the mooted move to Cairns, which may be completed in time for the 2027 season. How that goes down with the different roster demographics - those from Townsville, those from elsewhere in the North, those from the South and below - remains to be seen but it is happening:

The North Queensland Cowboys have taken a crucial step in their Cairns expansion plans, with the Cape York Hotel earmarked to become its NRLW team’s spiritual home from 2027.

The Cowboys Leagues Club has submitted a development application to Cairns Regional Council to transform the historic pub into a new social club for the team and supporters.

Men’s player of the year: Tom Dearden

Unlike Drinkwater, Robson and former Cowboy, Townsend, Tom Dearden is a spine player of North Queensland for North Queensland. In an otherwise uninspired season from the Cowboys, Dearden’s play in Origin was a highlight, cementing a transition from good club halfback to starting Maroon. At Railway Estate, he managed to accumulate the second most WARG of any Cowboy and outperformed his pre-season projection by 20 Baxes per game. While Dearden’s play for the Cowboys was less stellar - but still fine in a team that was mostly crap! - the challenge for Payten, or his successor, will be unlocking that Origin level of performance more often.

Previous winners: Scott Drinkwater (2023), Kyle Feldt (2024, liftime achievement award)

Women’s player of the year: Jakiya Whitfeld

Whitfeld has always been a supremely impressive player. It was clear that she was a top notch signing last year and had only been denied some representative opportunities by injury. The transition to fullback has felt seamless and has been extremely productive, netting Whitfeld 0.5 wins above reserve grade in a season where she missed two games. Maybe the individuals involved weren’t ready but Ricky Henry has to be wondering why he didn’t make the change last year.

Previous winners: Kirra Dibb (2023), Emma Manzelmann (2024)

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See you next year.

Welcome to Bovine Bulletin, a monthly newsletter about the North Queensland Cowboys.

The North Queensland Cowboys are best understood as several overlapping paradoxes.

How does a team this good on paper have such poor results on paper? The Wally Lewis medal winner plays the most important position on the field. Another Origin representative starts at the position that touches the ball the most. Tongan royalty is merely good enough for the fringe of this team. Also, there’s Scott Drinkwater.

At time of writing, that team is only three wins clear of the spoon and has a negative points difference well into triple digits.

How can a team that plays this well1, have such poor results? How does a team that plays this poorly even have eight wins? We can all recognise the symptoms - the Rugby League Eye Test has the most recent and most comprehensive listing - but brighter minds than me have failed to land on a convincing diagnosis.

The problem is mostly felt up front but sometimes also in the rear and which it is seems to depend on the phase of the moon as much as anything else. Could it be lupus? Porphyria? Or is it Clifford-Purdue Syndrome that derailed the entire season?

The Cowboys have the kind of fundamentals some of the less salubrious parts of Sydney’s NRL clubland would kill for. The club has money, fans, some heritage, an endless conveyor belt of talent, no rivals within a thousand kilometres and what should add up to a significant home ground advantage. In the last ten seasons, they've lost a grand final and lost a prelim and spent more time in the southern half of the league than many south of Mackay seem to be aware.

The inability to retain anyone promising is better known but never seems to attract much scrutiny in the HOW COULD THEY LET HIM GO genre from the Brisbane or Sydney press. That lack of pressure cuts both ways: the Cowboys do not have to make decisions quickly or erratically, but also never really have to make decisions or are held to account for what decisions do get made. A lot of this feels cliche to point out but it is nonetheless true.

It seems extremely likely that Todd Payten is going to go. It is hard to see how it could be otherwise. An isolated 2022 campaign where the Cowboys figured out how to defend and had a few breakouts is clearly the aberration, rather than the standard. That’s not good enough for North Queensland.

I assume, but do not know, we are waiting for Jeff Reibel to finalise his time at Railway Estate, so the new CEO can bring in their choice of football manager and/or head coach. If you wanted to apply, it is too late but that means the search is moving forward in some fashion. Perhaps we will see a resolution sooner rather than later2 but that is ultimately the next step for this franchise.

Fortunately, the women’s program has shown that someone in Townsville knows how to get results. After an extremely bumpy start in 2023, finishing second last, and improving to annoying but not good in 2024, finishing sixth and missing a very competitive finals picture, the North Queensland women’s Cowboys are officially good. I’ve long been a believer in this team and it’s the process and the outcome that are equally encouraging.

After seven rounds, the Cowboys are now 5-2 in fourth place and sitting a win above the Sharks in fifth. The price of admission to this year’s top six finals will likely be a 6-5 record. With the Tigers and Dragons left on the schedule of the four remaining games, that is an extremely viable goal.

With the way the team is structured, there is almost no way they will fall apart - barring a series of horrifying injuries - and should only improve if Kirra Dibb finds some form. In round 11, they can really put themselves to the test by playing the Broncos in what is likely to be the most competitive derby between those teams (especially if Brisbane rest players).

If North Queensland can secure a finals place and even snatch a win over the Broncos or Roosters while they’re not paying attention, everything after that is house money. After a tough men’s season, that should mean something.

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Welcome to Bovine Bulletin, a monthly newsletter about the North Queensland Cowboys.

Programming note: the weekly newsletter will be delayed to either Thursday or Friday, so I can appropriately capture the vibe of the Origin result (unbridled smugness without an ounce of self-awareness, or unbridled smugness that I was right).

With the men's season close to a formality at this stage, we turn our attention to the women's campaign because it is neither a disaster yet nor has it completely destroyed my self-esteem as someone who writes about rugby league part time.

You could hardly have asked for a better start than the Cowboys’ efforts against the Titans in Townsville on Saturday. A score of 20-6 seems less reflective of the domination delivered than North Queensland’s lower than average completion rate. Despite that and an equal share of the ball, the Cowboys ran for a manly-looking 1778 metres (that would be over 2000 metres in a 80 minute game) to the Titans’ 1470. That’s a 300 metre victory and not far off what the Roosters had over the Warriors en route to a win with ten more points in the margin.

While it seems extremely unlikely that they will be quite given the same runway to do as they will on the field, I was extremely impressed by this performance. As a person who has liked the Cowboys’ women’s team from the get-go, this felt like two years of hard work for them, and take-having for me, finally paying off.

I had reservations about the backline shuffling, moving Goldthorp to wing and Whitfeld to fullback, but damned if that combination didn’t work well. Krystal Blackwell also looked great on the other wing. Rosie Kelly can ball, it turns out, despite some early handling errors, so I may have to walk back prior critiques that were couched in union players having no idea about league. Manzelmann and Dibb need no further praise.

Most of all, the pack and the bench were astonishingly good. Weale, Yarrow, Peacock, Chester, Banu, Ormond-Maunsell didn’t take a backwards step and kicked in the door. Gold Coast looked off the pace all day and struggled to contain the Cowboys.

Future games won’t play out quite so easily for North Queensland. The halftime lead of 14-0, even that didn’t account for a few butchered opportunities, was met with a 6-6 second half, even if the Titans’ contribution came in garbage time. But the building blocks, of which all were on display in this game, will serve them well through the season to come.

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After the paywall, we're spending more time talking women’s footy and less time talking men’s footy, so we’re rewinding all the way back to 2023.

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Welcome to Bovine Bulletin, a monthly newsletter about the North Queensland Cowboys.

Prelude

Let’s just take a deep breath before we start and listen to some music.

You don’t want a lot of context as to when that song was originally released or think too much about the lyrics, just enjoy the silky smooth vocals, a simple melody and the soothing sound effects. Alright, let’s go.

Deeply Unserious, Part I

Last time, after spending too much time praising the Cowboys for their successful April, I left some questions marks over the defence behind the paywall. The Cowboys’ defence failed them in May. What I think is interesting are the ways that happened.

Unlike in round 1, Manly didn't find endless joy picking at the seams where the edge forwards were standing. Even though the game was competitive until late, Manly won the battle in the middle of field and despite comparable possession, completions and yardage, the Cowboys couldn't match them. Manly’s tries came from: an intercept; winning the aerial battle on a kick to the corner; a compressed defensive line on the right couldn’t slide fast enough to prevent an overlap on the left; a try that should have been called back but otherwise, Ben Trbojevic bullshit.

It was not particularly impressive stuff from the Sea Eagles but they got the dub. Despite not being all that competitive in the grand scheme, Manly have had the Cowboys’ measure twice now, with a similar underlying strategy presenting in two noticeably different ways. This should be alarming, even if the advantage is more to be found in the coach’s box than on the field. That Manly is coached by Anthony Seibold should add another siren emoji of concern.

In round 13, the Tigers, still one of the worst teams in the league, managed to dig deep for 20 minutes, despite the Cowboys being miles ahead on the scoreboard, and put the game into its highest gear, finding a pace that the Cowboys couldn't match until the clock got the better of Wests. The score was 32-6 at the 60th minute and finished 32-28 at full time.

Or at least that’s how it seemed live. On a rewatch, every set the Tigers scored on, the Cowboys invited them in. The Tigers start this phase by regathering a short kickoff. Later, Heath Mason makes a break through a line that is lazily guarded or too fatigued or both. There are errors and penalties and set restarts awarded against the Cowboys at 61’, 62’, 64’, 66’, 72’ and 73’. By contrast, the Tigers are not perfect, and finish the match with a comparable completion rate, but are far superior in this phase of the match.

Worse, the left side defence - somewhere between Laybutt, Dearden and Nanai, although they never seem to be in quite the same order - always seems to crack at a pivotal moment in the play

It wasn’t wholly that side that fell apart but it was the majority. On the other wing, Charlie Staines manages one key play, involving several kicks and fortunately forcing the ball out off Drinkwater, and to be the recipient and beneficiary of an easily constructed overlap of a flustered Cowboys’ defensive line.

North Queensland weathered the blows, invited more and waited for time to expire. A winning strategy as it turns out, but not one that will overcome many teams or overwhelm many fans. For teams who can bring more than 20 minutes of thunder and lightning and eat opposition errors for breakfast, this exposes many weaknesses: an inability to lift late in the game, a specific seam that can be picked at by Starford To’a (never mind Olakau’atu), a lack of physical and mental edge to overwhelm.

The Storm comprehensively tore the Cowboys apart. For the Storm’s second try, the Cows were at a standing start on the goal line.

There’s a gap between McLean and Robson, where the referee is standing. Both Laybutt and Dearden are at marker. That’s enough of a look for someone with the vision of Grant, who appears to be sizing up this exact opportunity in the screen cap, and the footspeed of Hughes to take the chance.

There are enough bodies to still have stopped the try. Robson should have hung wider to cover Hughes instead of trying to wrap up Grant, which forced McIntyre to come across and left Drinkwater as the last line of defence, which is never a great idea.

The third try was completely different but exposed the same fragility. The Storm line up in what I (mostly) jokingly call ‘6-4 diamond’, which is anything that looks vaguely threatening involving a large number of purple jerseys arranged in two parallel diagonal lines. It usually causes a pit in my stomach when my team is defending because I can see what’s coming next from my elevated position, even if they can’t.

Loiero peels off this play at the ruck and the ball swings from Grant to Hughes behind King as decoy, then to Papenhuyzen, who has a 4-on-3 and plenty of options to choose from.

He digs in, gets all of the Cowboys bar Laybutt to commit but fails to wrap up his arms (thanks Nanai) before finding the offload inside back to Hughes, who zips over the line.

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Welcome to Bovine Bulletin, a monthly newsletter about the North Queensland Cowboys.

This is, without a doubt, the single biggest rugby league story of the year and possibly one of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed.

People will say:

‘Oh, it’s not a big deal.’ Why is he hiding it then?

‘It doesn’t make a difference anyway.’ Then why do it?

‘The graininess of that screen cap of a phone video from the stands make it look more incriminating than it is.’ Look at the evidence in front of your eyes!

‘It’s just bloody water on a synthetic ball. It doesn’t matter!’ What happened to our society? It’s bloody un-Australian is what it is.

If the Cowboys did it too, and I make no admissions, that’s just good gamesmanship.

I could excuse the cheating in the ruck and the probable doping program operating out of Penrith that would put US Postal to shame but I draw the line here. Once this alleged trainer has been extradited to stand trial at The Hague, he will presumably to be sentenced to a lengthy stint at Abu Ghraib or another equally appalling human rights abuse doubling as a CIA black site.

Now that unpleasantness has been dealt with, I thought the Cowboys played well in their draw against the Panthers. I am impressed.

We’re nine games into the Cowboys’ 2025 campaign and the players have started to reach something like good form. Now they’re up to speed, the middles and rotation have enough beef to go physically toe-to-toe with the good teams and create some space. This is a team that doesn’t particularly need the services of Reuben Cotter right now. Sam McIntyre will do a pinch. I thought John Bateman would be an embarrassing signing in the pre-season but he’s held together well enough. I am a big Jeremiah Nanai detractor but he’s starting to really compete.

The spine have enough time with each other to put together plays on an ad hoc basis, which mostly revolves around Tom Dearden running at the line and tackling with his whole ass, Jake Clifford putting in the long kicks and Scott Drinkwater doing whatever his body decides to do at any given moment in time.

Murray Taulagi has woken from his Rip van Winkle slumber to start putting together some decent footy in time for Origin. Jaxon Purdue has been both revelatory and electric and could very well join him. Rob Derby had a bad night but is clearly has the tools to put together a long and distinguished career. Even Viliami Vailea, who I thought might be a huge liability, is playing well enough to hold down a spot and keep Zac Laybutt in QCup1.

Did the Cowboys defeat the the soul-crushing, gravel-grinding, meat-paste producers of the earlier parts of this decade? No, this is not quite that iteration of the Panthers but you can still see elements of that team in this team. Penrith of 2025 are less a clean break from the past than its deformed offspring.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of this game was that North Queensland looked out of gas coming into the final five minutes, relenting under the pressure of the Panthers’ attack, but managed to hold it together until the second part of golden point when Penrith were equally gassed. While they got lucky with Mitch Kenny’s frankly inexplicable decision to not go to Cleary in the Panthers’ one real shot to win in regulation, I would have written almost all of this post had the Cowboys lost, won or, as it turned out, drawn.

If the worst thing that happens to your team in a relatively high stakes situation is they repeatedly fail to set for a field goal and an inexperienced winger drops the ball half a dozen times, those are two fairly easy to fix problems. The main thing is the team is competitive. Glance at the other Queensland clubs if you need a reminder of how badly it can go when a team has structural issues.

You might harbour doubts that this means that the Cowboys are not polished enough to beat the good teams but there are no good teams in the 2025 Telstra NRL Premiership. The Storm like hammering minnows but can lose their bundle. The Bulldogs are a defensive powerhouse except when the Backstreet Boys go to town for 40 minutes in the rain. The Raiders are all over the shop. The Warriors might not have a high enough ceiling to go with the best on their day. The rest of the league has their shoelaces tied together.

Still, lots of people don’t come to this newsletter for unbridled enthusiasm. They come here for tempered expectations. 2023 featured a run like this, starting in round 16 with wins over the Storm and Panthers (back when that meant something) and coming to an abrupt end in round 22 at the hands of the Titans. I got excited about that too and the season was terminated with a damp squib of a win-and-in game against the Panthers, lost 44-12. In 2021, a terrible year by all measures, the Cowboys won six of eight after starting 0-4 and finishing with just one win in the remaining schedule. In 2024 and 2022, years that featured finals wins, streaks like this are harder to detect. The Cowboys won a lot of games, mostly against teams that were worse than them and lost the occasional game against better teams.

I'm not quite ready to conclude that the Payten Referendum is looking as solid as a second term Labor government, we’re going to have to wait for the postal ballots to come in and double check the preferences to make sure we’ve got it right, but the swing is on.

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Welcome to Bovine Bulletin, a monthly newsletter about the North Queensland Cowboys.

If this is the Todd Payten referendum, then you’d say the early returns are not especially encouraging.

Through five rounds, North Queensland are 2-3 with a -50 points difference. The Cowboys have conceded the third most points in the league, only better than the Roosters and Eels, and slightly behind the abysmal Panthers. Normally, that would be elite company but in 2025, the pyramid we’ve come to expect is inverted, along with our conventional thinking. Up is down, black and white and the Panthers are bad.

While that 2-3 record looks ok, and certainly recoverable as we are so early in the season, the two wins have come against the Raiders, who wilted in the heat and threw the game away, and the Panthers, who are struggling without Fisher-Harris and To’o. Neither were crushing victories nor hint at a sustainable path forward. Worse, being dunked on by the Sharks and Broncos in the losses would smart more. The Cowboys seem unlikely to be a team that gets the spoon, and the Eels are favourites for a reason, but it also doesn’t seem like the play of a team poised for significant success.

The state of the NRL over the last few years has been highly competitive, in that sludgey way the comp sometimes looks when no one is especially or reliably good. It doesn’t take a whole lot to get from the bottom to the top. The Cowboys have showed that with their yo-yoing ladder position over Payten’s tenure.

Indeed, it wouldn’t take a lot to get the line-up that’s facing the Bunnies into finals contention. Playing John Bateman and Jordan McLean isn’t ideal but everyone has some dreck somewhere in the lineup and both have shown a degree of something resembling competence. Jeremiah Nanai has improved since his trip to Cairns but remains frustrating. Murray Taulagi is borderline anonymous for a Queensland walk-up. It’s not clear if Tom Dearden has the imagination or a particularly broad skillset in attack. Rob Derby is going to need a little more time. A lot of boys have looked better over the last two weeks than they did in the first three.

Trusting the process would be easier if historical results had been more consistent, so patience seems ill-advised but what is the alternative? It’s an unappealing place to be but the solutions have to come from the coach and clarity is still some weeks away. The Payten referendum has not yet reached its resolution.

Irrespective of the metaphorical democratic outcomes of the coaching situation, one upside is that I am increasingly impressed with Jaxon “The Boilermaker”1 Purdue. A true North Queenslander, Purdue has had a rapid ascent through the ranks to find himself locked in the Cowboys 1-17. He is the kind of talent that might not have a bleedingly obvious home but just has to be included somewhere. Consequently, the half-as-a-junior is currently playing centre and I think he’s done OK.

Elsewhere in the team is another native, but prodigal, son, Jake Clifford. Clifford has already left Townsville for elsewhere - first Newcastle, then Hull - and has returned, definitely more experienced and one assumes wiser. But, barely six weeks into the season, Clifford is being linked with a trip back to the Super League via Leigh.

The motivations behind these stories are usually easy to parse. If its a player that doesn’t seem likely to leave, that suggests the story is planted by the club trying be rid of him. If its a player that doesn’t seem happy, then the agent is the one doing the planting. With Purdue looking increasingly comfortable in the NRL and the Boilermaker’s background, both on and off the field, he seems like an easy fit in the halves. Given part of the reason for Clifford’s return was homesickness, one assumes the story linking him to Leigh did not originate from his camp. Are Payten and Railway Estate getting ready to make a change?

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Welcome to Bovine Bulletin, a monthly newsletter about the North Queensland Cowboys.

Programming notes

This is the first official edition of the Bovine Bulletin, a newsletter dedicated to the North Queensland Cowboys. This section will function in much the same way as the Pony Picayune does and will run approximately in the middle of the month. I think fanbases are underserved for decent text-based content that doesn’t treat them like morons1 and so I have decided to do something about that.

Those of you who have followed my writing over the years will know I am not from North Queensland (the south-east, actually) and I am not a Cowboys fan (yes, Broncos). I have been to most of the major hubs in North Queensland, can point to Cairns on a map and I don’t think Bob Katter is the messiah of the north2. I believe this puts me ahead of 90% of people writing about rugby league in either of the major newspaper sets, most of whom haven’t ventured further north than Port Macquarie and don’t know their Atherton Roosters from their Sarina Crocodiles3.

This doesn’t mean that the Cowboys will never be criticised. They will get the same treatment as everyone else and I am (usually) fair. If you want uncut praise, then you’re in the wrong place and may prefer to return to the moron-centred coverage, although they are also unlikely to give you what you want because they don’t care.

Also, when the Cowboys win the Big Game, you get a taste of my immiseration and that seems popular too. Either way, enjoy.

Let’s go over how every Cowboys season review has been written since COVID:

• The 2021 season, and pretty much everything since that grand final run in 2017, did not go well. The Cowboys are underperforming their roster and are bad. Plus they just signed Chad Townsend for 2022. Christ.

• 2022 was the biggest single turnaround in Cowboys history. Just as everyone, including me, gave up on them, the Cowboys are back, baby. Chad Townsend is the greatest player in history.

• 2023 didn't go well. 2022 was an aberration. The Cowboys are bad. Chad should go back to Sydney.

• 2024 went pretty good. 2023 was an aberration and the Cowboys are, indeed, back, baby. Chad should still go back to Sydney.

Guys, just pick a lane. Be good or bad but just pick one. The pattern of it is meaningless. The only consistency is the inconsistency.

The Cowboys’ recent seasons could serve as an allegory for how tightly packed the midfield of the NRL has been in Vlandoball era. With the number of premiership contenders ranging from two to six, it doesn't take much to get from just above the Tigers’ cellar to just outside the Panthers’ porch. If Scott Drinkwater does not drop the ball five times in a game and Jeremiah Nanai actually tries and gets aerial and maybe there's a touch of good fortune through the soggy Origin period, then that might be enough to move from say 15th to 3rd or 12th to 5th.

It can also tell a story about Todd Payten. He has been at the helm for those seasons and delivered two shockers and two very good efforts. We can excuse the first shocker as year zero but the lack of consistency speaks to the quality of the process. The process is what you pay the coach for.

What weighting you want to apply to the Cowboys-specific outcomes relative to the broader context, I will leave to you, but I think this season serves as a referendum on Payten’s leadership. This is his team and if it goes poorly, either through a lack of tactical brilliance or the locker room giving up or whatever misfortune, then that will tell it's own story. If it goes well, then we officially consecrate 2023 as The Aberration, perhaps because of that midfield congestion, and move on, firmer in the knowledge that he's the man to lead this franchise for the foreseeable.

2025 presents its challenges. How will Dearden and Clifford go? Heilum Luki did his ACL, so are the Cowboys really forced to rely on John Bateman, a man who's already walked out on two clubs and hasn’t looked up to playing in first grade for a while? Every roster has its holes but seriously, how are they going to buttress that left edge?

Maybe the answers to those prove to be “well enough that they become the halves for Queensland”, “yes and he's up to it, contrary to all prior evidence” (or perhaps “it didn't matter after Marly Bitungane4 started stomping the shit out of everyone in Cup”) and “we just need Robert Derby to take the opportunity this presents and make the jersey his.” If Payten can engineer those favourable outcomes, that will go a long way to securing a favourable response at the ballot box.

On the other hand, if the league figures out they can go right and find plenty of joy, and this configuration represents Plans A through Z and there are no cavalry over the hill in reserve, then it doesn't take a lot of imagination to work out the consequences.

Attention: Cowboys fans

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Deep Dive

The traditional Deep Dive into the 202X NRL season has been split up a little this year. Each of the Q4 will get theirs embedded in the longer season preview and then I’ll cover the rest of the league in a Stats Drop.

Explainers for metrics:

More about sims/PRVRS here.

The executive summary for the Cowboys:

• North Queensland had a hot offence in 2024, reflected in their third best points per game, third best offensive efficiency and third best platoons for both 1-5 and 6+7+9 by WARG.

• Defensively, the Cowboys were significantly weaker, conceding an eighth best points per game, ninth best defensive efficiency and, very concerningly, second worst conversion rate in the NRLM. In other words, for the breaks and metres made by the opposition, the opposition were able to convert that into real points with relative ease against the Cowboys.

• The pack remains weak - the starters only good enough for 7th best in the league and the bench 12th - and that’s been a problem for some time. Taumalolo really covered a lot of blemishes for a long time and once he declined, the Cowboys haven’t found a long term solution.

• Jeremiah Nanai had a good season by the Zs, but still not as impressive as the average David Fifita season. Still, I can’t stress how much the season will hinge on the Dearden/Clifford combo. I’d like it to work but I’ll need some evidence before I’d stake anything meaningful.

• According to the PRVRS ratings and the draw, the Cowboys have a 63% chance of making the finals.

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Rewind

A mean spirited affair brimming with penalties, frustration and scuffles, North Queensland travel to New Zealand in round 3 of the 2005 season. The Cowboys front-run early but fail to convert an excess of possession in the first half to an unassailable lead. The Warriors hit back, frequently on the counterattack and capitalising on Cowboys’ errors. As possession evens out, the Warriors edge in front with a quarter to go. Through most of the game Thurston is not yet Thurston but in the last ten minutes, we see what’s to come.

As a bonus, there’s a shithot back three of Ty Williams, Matt Bowen and Matt Sing, Carl Webb with the haircut that launched a thousand razors and multiple visits to the blood bin, Adelaide’s Rod Jensen and Redcliffe’s slow giant, Shane Tronc.

Some other observations:

• In 2005, five seconds was enough time to assess whether a player was OK with a head injury.

• The attitude of the commentators to high shots has a lot more in common with those of 20 years prior than those of 20 years later.

• A brief appearance at half time from a young(er) Ivan Cleary.

Notes

• Signatures: Jaxson Paulo for 2, John Bateman for 2 (yuck), Rob Derby for 3

• The Cowboys face the Sea Eagles, Sharks, Broncos, Raiders and Panthers in the first five rounds, including a Friday 5pm game (?) against the defending premiers. That is a tough start to the season and normally, I’d say that would give you a pretty good idea of how the season is going to go but the Cowboys could start 0-5 and then run the table home, or start 5-0 and then win three more games.

• Reece Robson to depart Cowboys at end of 2025 for the Roosters. This is why you can’t rely on New South Welshmen. If Drinkwater was any higher up the Blues depth chart, the Cows would be in real trouble.

• Injuries: Chester out for the year, Luki out for the year

• The North Queensland Toyota Cowboys’ vision for year-round, boots-on-the-ground in Cairns took a significant step forward today with the announcement that a re-elected Miles Labor Government will commit… ah that’s a shame.

• In the Dub: Harden, Weale, Goldthorp, two Raftstrand-Smiths, Banu and Malupo all sign on, joined by Roache, George, Dick, Kelly and Ormond-Maunsell. That’s the core of a solid team, albeit with a strange level of Kiwi talent. Who are the Warriors going to sign? Meanwhile, Ben Jeffries has lost Tamika Upton and Hannah Southwell from the Knights. With the uptick last year, that is starting to feel a lot like a bullet dodged. All the way with Ricky Henry… Ricky H… R Henry… We have time to work on that.

For many years, and perhaps the entire post-Thurston era, the North Queensland Cowboys have proven to be inscrutable.

In 2022, Townsend could put up a lob of a kick, have it land in a knot of three or four defenders but - and this is the crucial bit - he could expect Jeremiah Nanai to run through, make a catch and force his way over the line for a try. The defence could be a bit patchy, especially out wide, but through a combination of forwards having enough grunt to win a battle of field position regularly - the Cowboys outgained their opponents in 75% of games - and thoroughly - by an average of 234 metres - the middle was never challenged. Add in some of what scientists call “total bullshit” and the Cowboys were able to post a lot of wins. Everyone looked like crap by comparison.

The drop from Scott Drinkwater was to Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, and the drop from Nanai and Gilbert was to Luki and Lemuelu. Tom Dearden hadn’t put any non-Seiboldian tape out there. Murray Taulagi figured out exactly where the sideline was to the millimetre and exploded and Val Holmes was still a star. There was a real vibe in the team, the confidence growing unmistakably week on week, that carried them to 15 minutes from a grand final.

In 2023, Townsend stopped putting those kicks up because there was no one coming down with them. The defence was not just patchy, but disorganised, dumb and confused. That disorganisation extended from the sidelines to the middle, which had turned into marshmallow. Everyone looked slow and like they’d forgotten how to tackle. That yardage advantage had diminshed from a 75% win rate to under 50% and from +234 metres per game to -20. The whole experience was perhaps best summarised by the game at the Tigers:

The drop from Scott Drinkwater was to ragdoll-in-a-washing-machine Tom Chester. Nanai and Luki played about a season between them, opening up minutes for Jack Gosiewski and Luciano Leilua. The drop from Jason Taumalolo was to, apparently, Jake Granville. Tualagi consoldiated his place as one of the finest wingers in the game but Kyle Feldt was punted to Cup to make way for Semi Valemei, who exploded but only for the three or four weeks of his nine week residency and had some of the same defensive issues. Val Holmes was a year older. Suddenly, the opposition looked a lot more competent.

And yet, sometimes, these guys were pretty bloody good. The Cowboys smashed the Roosters at Magic Round in the rain. North Queensland sent 45 past a full strength Melbourne, including a Chad Townsend field goal of disrespect. They beat the Panthers, which Origin affected or otherwise, not many have done since covid, with one of the great individual efforts by Scott Drinkwater in golden point. The Rabbitohs were crushed, beginning a terminal slide for South Sydney. The Cowboys could have made the grand final with the form they were in. The whole experience was perhaps best summarised by the game versus the Tigers:

Coaching is a bit like being a wizard. When it works, it’s magic. When it doesn’t, you’re a prat in a purple robe with a pointy hat. Bad coaching seems to be trying to find the right combination of words to cast a spell of winning. Good coaching is about setting players up to do their best and then some.

Sometimes, it clicks, like 2022. Sometimes, it doesn’t, like 2021. Sometimes it’s both, like 2023. It’s strange that you can have roughly the same squad, the same coach and the same handicaps as the rest of the league and have such divergent results but that’s the existentially terrifying part of coaching. It could all go away and you won’t understand why or know how to get it back. It might not even be your fault but you will be blamed for it.

Part of the problem is that teamwork is ineffable. It’s messy. It’s quantum. It’s chaotic. It’s the sum of a thousand, million little interactions that bring that specific set of people to that specific point and asking them to do something that almost no one else can do as well as they could. Spending time together, both on and off the field, is one ingredient but “fit” is a three letter word with huge implications.

Part of the problem is that the margins, especially in the NRL, are so fine. One good Chad Townsend season will take you from the bottom to the top of the league. That doesn’t seem like that should be the gap between the almost worst and almost best in the league but it does seem to be the case.

I think the story of the '22 Cowboys, and the subsequent failure of the '23 Cowboys, is actually a story of the Panthers and the Vlandoball era. Whether it was the rule changes or the Panthers’ process or, probably, a bit of both, the league is still highly stratified. Normally, there'd be a couple of great powers, plenty of minor powers, some non-powers and a balance that was constantly in flux.

Now, there's a supermassive black hole that has consumed the non-linear extremes of performance through the sheer gravity of Ivan Cleary’s system, and there's everyone else still playing rugby league with whatever is left over. Most teams have both ordinary and obvious weaknesses but the gap between those clubs that aren’t currently on fire is so close that you can trade your way to the top of the pile on confidence and a bit of competence and a bit of depth. The Cowboys did that in 2022 and the middle part of 2023. Take away the depth, and the middle goes to water and the confidence evaporates and we’re left with the rest of the 2023 Cowboys.

None of this is to say that Todd Payten is in any sort of imminent danger. The Cowboys are still capable of the kind of collpase that would end his career in Townsville but he’s also had the kind of run that will see him get a second shot somewhere else (Robina post-2026? Redcliffe post-2028?). Either way, Payten is currently 37-37 after 74 games at the helm of the Cowboys and he will come close to making that an even century this year. Losing a home preliminary final isn’t the best looking resume from 100 games.

The deadwood in the literal depths of the depth chart have been jettisoned for fresh faces1. We’re talking guys that have already made names for themselves in the back nine of 2023, like Robert Derby, Zac Laybutt and Kulikefu Finefeuiaki. Also, Tom Dearden is pretty good. I’m not real confident that Jake Clifford or Tom Mikaele, both in from Super League although the latter via Titans/Burleigh, are aces in the hole but perhaps will serve as cover during Origin, providing some of the depth that was missing last year.

My view forward for 2024 is that the wild oscillations from ‘21 to ‘22 back to ‘23 will dampen to find something close to the Cowboys’ true level and that should be a slightly above average team. The competence should be there and the depth has been restored and now they just need the confidence. That starts with one man saying the right words.

Guess: 13-11, 8th

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Stats Drop

A refresher on the metrics. The projections are built from a weighted average of the last three years of player TPRs. It tends to extrapolate what has happened to the future, which catches most of the league, but it misses the occasional explosions. Last season, backs had an unusually productive year compared to forwards and while the numbers are adjusting to this potentially new reality, the system is in transition. As usual, 1-17 is as per League Unlimited with some tweaks to account for news since publication.

• Regression: The Cowboys had a points difference of +4, the tenth best in the league but better than two of the finalists. Their Pythagorean expectation was equivalent to 12 wins, compared to 12 actual wins, so we would expect a similar performance this season. The Cowboys will need to win at least 12 games to hit the overs on the disappointment line.

• Projections: The Cowboys project as 11th best in the NRL by per game Taylors. They are the only C-grade teams, i.e. projected to produce more than 85% and less than 90% of the Panthers’ projected per game production. There are three projected A-grade teams, seven B-grade (Broncos) and six D-grade (Dolphins and Titans).

• Experience: The Cowboys’ 1-17 are moderately experienced and have 66% of the career WARG of the top rated team by this metric (Rabbitohs, 74.2), which is the eighth most in the league. Drinkwater, Taumalolo and Holmes are the highest reated players by this metric, comprising more than half of the team’s experience.

• Talent: The Cowboys have a NRL-average distribution of talent, per pre-season TPR projections. Six players are projected to produce more than half the team’s Taylors and these are the players in jerseys number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 62.

• Coach: Todd Payten has generally extracted about a league-average amount of production out of his players. In 2022, his coach factor was +7 but this declined to slightly below 0 in 2023 for a career (2016 - 2023) total of +5, which is eighth best in the league. Since arriving in 2021, the Cowboys have added 52 class Elo rating points under Payten, the ninth best of the current NRL tenures.

If I may be blunt, of the top four NRLM teams in 2022, two were indelibly stamped with POTENTIAL FRAUD status. The first were the 18-6 Cronulla Sharks, who had ridden a relatively soft draw and a scintillating but mercurial offence to a high finish in the standings. The second were the 17-7 North Queensland Cowboys, who had signed Chad Townsend in the off-season and somehow, mysteriously, added ten wins as a result. The Sharks went out in straight sets, first to the Cowboys and then to the Rabbitohs. The Cowboys lost a close preliminary final to the Eels for the right to be meat in the Panthers’ grand final grinder.

Of these two, my gut feel - not backed in any way by statistics or analysis - was that the Sharks were the more likely candidate to receive a visit from the mean regression fairies and that the Cowboys were the more sustainably good team. Ironically, the Eels suffered as much as anyone, following a grand final annihilation with a so-so 12-12 2023 season and a tenth placed finish. The Sharks put together a 14-10 campaign to make the bottom half of the eight and were out after the first week of finals. The North Queensland Cowboys finished 2023 on an even .500, in eleventh place, with a points difference of just +4, a little better than the Sea Eagles and a little worse than the Eels, but otherwise very much not relevant.

The middling results disguises that Cowboys’ season played out in three extremely distinctive phases. The first phase of the Cowboys’ season made up half of the calendar, after which the Cows were 5-8 with a -90 points difference, or lost by an average of -6.9 points per game. Belying the talent available on the roster, the Cowboys looked disorganised as much as anything and lacked any sense of thrust when moving forward with the ball.

This phase included an inexplicable collapse to the Tigers, going down 66-18, a brooming from the Warriors, a controlled demolition by the Broncos, another by the Sharks, an embarrassing loss at home to the newbie Dolphins, a proforma loss to the Eels, a golden point loss to the Bulldogs (!), narrow wins over the Raiders and Knights and more comfortable wins over the bad Roosters, the depleted Titans and the otherwise normal Dragons. In that run, they won two games against the run of possession and lost one, that extremely frustrating experience at the Warriors. The rest were either 50/50 splits or the team with the ball won the game.

The second phase ran between the first and the week following the third Origin game. The Cowboys ran the board, 6-0 and won games by an average of 24.5 points (+147 points difference) against the crème de la crème of the Storm, Panthers and Rabbitohs, and also the Sea Eagles and a crucial 74-0 revanche in Townsville against the Tigers. This period was extended slightly with two byes, turning a six game winning streak into two solid months of dominance, begetting dreams of grand final appearances if only this cavalcade of points and possession - in four of the wins, the Cowboys had over 52% possession but shockingly overcame a deficit against the Panthers - could be maintained.

Alas! Almost as soon as the State of Origin series was completed, the Cowboys turned back into pumpkins, losing two to Queensland rivals and two to good Sydney teams and taking a sole victory over the ailing Dolphins. With the season on the line in the final round, the Cowboys folded meekly in the face of the eventual premiers, who refused to take it easy. The points difference in this final phase of the 2023 Cowboys was -53, or -10.6 points per game.

Between that round 5 loss to the Dogs and that round 7 loss to the Warriors, the Cowboys could have been 14-10. While they would not have been a good team, ripe for a first week exit, being in the finals would have been better than not being in the finals. Fans are left wondering what happened and what might have been.

Undoubtedly, there are complex scheme and motivational and personnel reasons for this sudden downpour of form in the middle of an otherwise arid season, or the sudden eruption of wins to lift the team from the subterranean to the mountaintop only to fall back into a sea-level ravine over the course of three years. It is poetical that the former is likely a microcosm of the latter. Unfortunately, while I briefly considered grinding several seasons’ worth of tape to isolate and highlight these reasons, doing so would simply take too long for me to be able to send this out to you with any passing relevance to the season just passed.

It would be too simple to chalk the Cowboys’ purple patch up to playing teams suffering Origin outs. While the Steel Greys beat some of the more Origin-affected teams in Penrith, Melbourne and South Sydney, North Queensland had the second most Origin caps of any club in 2023, two less than the Panthers and three more than the Broncos. Strategically timed byes would have had more of influence, mitigating the impact of the Origin on the Cowboys’ best players who otherwise did seem to receive a temporary boost from playing for their state except, of course, for Reece Robson, who got a big fat L.

After re-reading the analysis posted after round 9, most of it still holds up at a high level. The Cowboys had the tenth-best defence in the league - bearing in mind that the league only has 17 teams - and the ninth-best attack in terms of points per game. North Queensland had among the fewest errors in the league, were close to the top for ineffective and missed tackles and about the middle to below average for most attacking stats. In terms of Wins Above Reserve Grade, the Cowboys back five were fifth, the key playmakers twelfth and the starting pack were fourteenth in the competition.

For a team whose strength has traditionally been up front, in the trenches, to be so far off the pace of the Titans, Broncos, Panthers and Warriors on this (admittedly limited) metric should be concerning. The non-half backs come off looking better but let’s remember that WARG does a poor job of assessing defensive competence. Dearden replicated his numbers from last year. Townsend was well short of producing what’s needed for the Cowboys to be in the elite tier. Bearing in mind that Chadwick played 11 games in 2020 and played 24 in 2023, it was his worst season by WARG since 2018. Robson played his worst season by WARG since moving to the North in 2020, producing about half of his output from last season.

Of the players that out-performed their TPR projections, there was only necomer Semi Velmei, the veteran Valentine Holmes largely benefitting from the emergence of the yardage centre, somehow old man Kyle Feldt (but very much not old man Jake Granville), attacking lynchpin Scott Drinkwater and Peta Hiku. All of the brand name forwards - Nanai, Luki, Robson, Leilua, Neame, Taumalolo, Hess and Cotter - underperformed expectations.

You can put whatever stock you want into those numbers but the eye test, the results and the stats all add up to not good enough for North Queensland. As I observed after the second Warriors loss, Todd Payten has had one bad year, one good year and now, one average year. Over those three seasons, the Cowboys have evened out to exactly 36-36 and a -12 points difference. That one good year has bought Payten time but the Cowboys looked structurally awful at points on both sides of the ball - often a listless offence and defence is disarray - and he is the engineer of this franchise. This level of performance might be sustainable over the long run but it absolutely does not align with expectations of Cowboys management or their fans. The Sharks tossed John Morris for a season of this kind of middling performance, let alone (on average) three.

So the Cowboys continue their struggle to adjust from their Whiggish pre-premiership world, where the effort and the narrative build to a single resplendent moment when Johnathan Thurston kicks that field goal in 2015, to a more chaotic post-premiership world, where the resources to do it all again need to be carefully reconstructed in such a way that another resplendent moment might be allowed to exist. Payten will be afforded another opportunity but there’s no reason the Cowboys shouldn’t be aiming to replicate 2022. If he can’t, then the reconstruction will need a new engineer because this one isn’t building anything.

To be fair, better and worse clubs have struggled with precisely this conundrum. It is, in fact, extremely common. Perhaps the most obvious victims are the post-2005 Wests Tigers. Less obviously and in different ways, this condition also afflicts the post-2016 Sharks, the post-1994 Raiders, the post-2010 Dragons, the post-2014 Rabbitohs, the post-2011 Sea Eagles, the post-2001 Knights, the post-2004 Bulldogs and, if you consider the run from 1992 to 2006 a singular Bennettian success, the Broncos. That leaves the only clubs to really solve it are everyone’s favourites - the Panthers, the Storm and the Roosters. How one might replicate their strategies is not immediately obvious, although it would not be hard to guess that it involves some form of cheating. Perhaps that is sour grapes but the cure at least is obvious: winning.

While analysis frustratingly middling teams like the Cowboys men’s team can be fascinating, analysing bad teams is rarely interesting. The depths plumbed by the brand new Cowboys women’s team were hardly unexpected for an expansion team, even if I was way too high on them in the pre-season1. The Cowboys were competitive with the Titans, inexplicably beat the Knights, were crushed by the Broncos, rallied to beat the Tigers with a last minute try, crushed by the Sharks, helpless to repel Rachel Pearson’s kicking and gave the Eels their only win, were crushed by the Dragons, crushed by the Raiders and crushed by the Roosters.

North Queensland weren’t that far off being winless or, perhaps more confusingly, taking a sole win from Newcastle. That feels like a poor rate of return when you examine the roster. There was no women’s team without Kirra Dibb and I hate to think what kind of product the Cowboys would have put on the pitch without her. Fran Goldthorp was quietly competent but perhaps should have been found a larger role in attack. The five-eighth took a while to settle on Tahlulah Tillett but got there in the end. Shaniah Power is a killer and Tallisha Harden rules. Emma Manzelmann is in the Jillaroos extended squad and China Polata played for Queensland. Bree Chester is an All-Star and a promising prospect. Autumn-Rain Stephens-Daly has played for New Zealand.

While there are certainly holes in this line-up, particularly up front and especially against the best teams in the competition, this team should certainly not be a last minute try away from an 1-8 record. Naturally, when the Cowboys got stuffed into their locker by most of the competition, defence was an issue and more precisely, it looked like half the team had no concept of how to defend at this level. The Cowboys were too easily spread apart with conventional shifts, or beaten by grubbers in behind for faster attackers, or punched through the line, or simply run around. If you can imagine a way of scoring a try, the Cowboys probably conceded it and generally didn’t make their opposition work too hard for it. As I said after round 7, “one defensive lapse led to a pounding on the next set, setting up the next defensive lapse and so on” - an ouroboros of pain.

A roster assembled relatively late compared to the metropolitan teams and a nine game sample size might mean a few different things. It may mean that there wasn’t enough time for the team to cohere. It may mean that there wasn’t enough time for coach Ben Jeffries to settle in on his best 17, although I don’t think that’s as hard as it was made to seem and tweaking every week almost certainly didn’t help matters, or fully install his philosophy. It definitely means that we didn’t see the best of what this team could offer. It may also hide any number of defects that may have been more evident in a longer season, like the coach doesn’t know how to structure a defence or the Cowboys haven’t invested sufficiently in their women’s program to be competitive or I have grossly overestimated this team’s capability and they just plain suck. We won’t know which mix of these, or others, hypotheses are true, if any, until sometime in 2024.

It would be a shame to waste seasons of some of this talent and they would hardly be the first footballers, even the first footballers at the North Queensland Cowboys, to find themselves in such a position. But it’s far too early to tell whether the snake can take its tail out of its mouth or if the snake decided to bite down and start pumping venom.

NRLM Player of the Year - Scott Drinkwater. The Shadow of Terrigal still sucks at defender but he is exceptional with the ball in hand. Not quite fast, not quite the best kicker but probably the most elusive player in the sport with a top five passing game. Honourable mention for Tom Dearden, who will be the best player on this team next year.

NRLW Player of the Year - Kirra Dibb. I cannot stress how little the Cowboys had to offer, especially in the first couple of games, without Kirra Dibb booting the ball to keep them at least within touching distance of being in the game.

Men’s Win of the Year - 74-0.

Women’s Win of the Year - Somehow the only team to beat Newcastle this year, the Cowboys defeated the Knights, 31-20, in round 2. It’s a win that looks even more inexplicable than it did at the time. It was a potential proof of concept for North Queensland but they failed to replicate holding the ball for fifteen straight minutes to close out the game as a winning strategy later in the season.

Stats Drop

Feeders

In 2023, the North Queensland Cowboys had an interesting year with their feeders, pouring all of their talent into the Townsville Blackhawks and nominally having similar arrangements with the Northern Pride and Mackay Cutters but actually cutting them off from the relationship they had enjoyed in previous years. I talked about these issues at length.

It remains to be seen what’s happening for 2024. The Blackhawks have been unequivocal that their relationship will change and the QRL have amended their rules to force the NRL clubs to spread talent around. It’s possible the Cowboys have accepted this, especially given the disastrous seasons both the senior and reserve sides had, or they will be de-camping for NSW Cup where they can run the North Queensland Cowboys at significant expense to themselves and any credibility they have as a Queensland club.

The Mackay Cutters took over the BMD Premiership licence from the North Queensland Gold Stars for 2023. The Pride will join the competition in 2025 and the Blackhawks in 2026.

Townsville Blackhawks

• Queensland Cup: 12th, 8-11-1, +25 [season review]

• Colts: 3rd, 11-3, +364, won the premiership defeating Easts

• WU19s: 9th, 3-2-1, +34

• Mal Meninga Cup: 1st, 6-0, +148, runner-up to Redcliffe

Northern Pride

• Queensland Cup: 7th, 11-7-2, -79 [season review]

• Colts: 14th, 0-14, -516

• WU19s: 14th, 0-6, -190

• Mal Meninga Cup: 10th, 2-3-1, -26

Mackay Cutters

• Queensland Cup: 14th, 3-17,-274 [season review]

• QRLW: 3rd, 5-2, +82, lost to Burleigh in the preliminary final

• Colts: 9th, 6-7-1, -89

• WU19s: 2nd, 5-1, +90

• Mal Meninga Cup: 7th, 3-2-1, +24

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