If the beers are cold and the afternoon’s long enough, we’d be talking footy all day, every day until kickoff on Thursday night. With so much to review, let’s break down some of the key players and actions throughout each week in the NRL.
– Cowboys: Resilience over results
– There’s always next week for… Canberra Raiders
– SuperCoach Shoutouts
– Play of the Round
NQ Cowboys: Resilience over results
The scoreboard reads as a harsh reality check for a resurgent North Queensland Cowboys in 2022, but their 22-0 loss to the Penrith Panthers in Round 12 was anything but.
The Cowboys looked good to begin this one. They moved the ball fluently last week against Melbourne to put fatigue into the defence and they clearly had similar plans on Friday night.
Finding space on the left edge from the kick off, the Cowboys immediately went on the attack and put the pressure on Penrith. Dominating field position is something we’re used to seeing from the defending premiers but they were asked to work their way into this game from the opening set. Unfortunately, that pressure was relieved when Reuben Cotter gave away a penalty midway through the next set and Isaah Yeo scored one minute later.
As they have consistently done over the past two seasons, Penrith will punish you for ill discipline or errors – particularly in your own half. More often than not they’ll turn possession and field position into points, which is why the alarm bells were ringing when Chad Townsend conceded an escort penalty on his own 10m line not long afterwards to gift Penrith a fresh attacking set in the eighth minute.
Instead of folding under the pressure though, the Cowboys would respond to produce six consecutive sets of unbelievable, undeniable defence on their own try line.
Just last week Jase looked at how many points teams score per tackle inside their opposition’s 20m line.
Penrith’s 29.3 points per game ranks them the best attacking team in the competition this year, and their 0.84 points per tackle in good ball makes them the fourth most efficient with the ball. It’s only Nathan Cleary and Jarome Luai’s propensity to play patient and build pressure with repeat sets that sees them outscored per tackle by Melbourne, North Queensland and Brisbane so far this year.
On Friday night though, the Cowboys turned those numbers upside down.
With 52 tackles inside North Queensland’s 20m line, Penrith scored just 22 points for a decidedly average 0.42 points per tackle. That ranks them alongside the Bulldogs (0.40) in terms of attacking efficiency in 2022, only it wasn’t due to any lack of potency in attack – more so a desperation and detail in defence.
Four times in a six minute period Penrith got themselves over the line only to be held up, and on the fifth time they made an error. Panthers fans might try and tell you Izack Tago scored in the left hand corner and that fingernail into touch doesn’t matter, but that’s a fingernail out of place due to the pressure applied by the Cowboys in the six minutes prior.
Resilience is the key takeaway for North Queensland in Round 12.
After defending the best part of six full sets back-to-back, the Cowboys smartly worked 40+ metres out their own end before producing this on the last:
In one set North Queensland get themselves 90 metres upfield, hand Penrith the ball and dare them to do the same. Cotter gets a quick play-the-ball on the last to give his halfback time to kick, and Townsend drops it on a dime for his chasers to wrap up Dylan Edwards on his own line. In the ensuing set, the Cowboys lock in defensively and return a clearing kick to their own 30m line before earning a penalty at the ruck.
Talk about a moral victory.
North Queensland’s ability to absorb pressure with their defence before immediately responding with the ball is a quality usually associated with the top teams in the competition. Melbourne have been doing it for years and more recently it’s been the Panthers, and it’s time we lump the 2022 North Queensland Cowboys into that mix.
Despite the fatigue and pressure that comes from playing with just 44% possession – and with 66% of the game played in their own half – the Cowboys would limit Penrith to just six more points in the second stanza. And while they couldn’t maintain the shift-happy game plan we saw to begin the match, they still had the energy to threaten with every rare opportunity in attack.
Reece Robson deserves a shoutout for the quality of service he is providing from dummy-half. He’s getting his halves on the outside of their opposite man and allowing them to play on the front foot at speed. Townsend uses that time to square up defenders and create space out wide while guys like Tom Dearden and Scott Drinkwater are using it as an opportunity to take on the line themselves.
It’s only a perfect Penrith defensive system that carries Dearden into touch here, and keeping with the theme of resilience the Panthers would immediately fire a shot back themselves.
A pinpoint 40/20 attempt from Nathan Cleary on tackle four beats Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow to the touchline and wins Penrith a fresh attacking set. Just two tackles later, the Panthers looked to fire a shot down their right edge but this time it was the Cowboys who would muscle up and force the error.
There was a lot to like about the Cowboys’ performance in Round 12.
Throw Jason Taumalolo into a game like that and add in Kyle Feldt’s avg. 129 running metres (compared to Tabuai-Fidow’s 53m) and the Cowboys are suddenly that little bit closer. The resilience they showed in this game is what usually seperates the good teams from the great and can take years to develop. Todd Payten seems to have cultivated it over a single offseason.
They’ve got a difficult Origin period to navigate now but the Cowboys have banked their early wins and I think it’ll be much closer than 22-0 when these two sides meet again in September.
There’s Always Next Week For…
… the Canberra Raiders.
The Milk are slowly coming good.
They’ve won three of their last four games but arguably most impressive was their performance in a losing effort against Parramatta on Sunday. They went blow for blow with the Eels for 80 minutes in Round 12 and if they can play like that every week, they’ll beat most teams.
It’s no coincidence that the Raiders have looked better since debuting Zac Woolford at hooker. There’s no comparison between a three-game rookie and a 138-game veteran, but Woolford is filling the role Canberra would have planned for Josh Hodgson this season.
While Tom Starling plays well above his weight and is lightning quick off the mark, Woolford is a genuine dummy-half. He provides smart service from the ruck (three try assists from three games already) and the subtleties of his ballplaying brings Canberra’s forwards onto the ball and into positive areas on the field. Joe Tapine averaged 137 running metres from Rounds 1-9 but has averaged 180m per game since Woolford debuted in Round 10.
Woolford’s inclusion has also allowed Adam Elliott to revert back to lock-forward where he is clearly most effective. Elliott has good leg speed and brings a point of difference alongside Josh Papali’i and Tapine in how the Raiders work upfield through the middle.
With Jamal Fogarty making a compelling return from injury last week, the Raiders are only now getting a chance to play how they trained during the offseason. Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad is a big out but Xavier Savage will have spent enough time there over summer to do a job and he’s clearly a product for the future.
They’ve got games against Origin-hit Roosters and Broncos sides in the next two weeks, then winnable matchups with Newcastle and St George-Illawarra before a bye in Round 17.
Currently sitting 10th with 12 points, the next month is a real opportunity for the Raiders to entrench themselves in the bottom half of the eight.
SuperCoach Shout-outs
We’re keeping an eye on a few players in our rolling SC watchlist as part of my ‘Heads In!’ weekly review, but this segment is reserved for any special mentions from the round that was. You’re clever enough to find the top scorers yourself, so this is for anything I liked, noticed or want to see again.
Cameron Munster – 5/8 – $723,00 – An elite individual performance from Munster with two tries, one assist, five tackle busts, 149 running metres and two one-on-one strips. Coming into form at the right time for Queensland…
