March 2025

Clifford or Purdue: who should partner Dearden?

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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After the paywall, we're spotlighting the potential battle between Clifford and Purdue, you can read my diary and planner and we’re rewinding to 1998.

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