The North Queensland Cowboys kicked off the 2021 NRL season full of hope but finished up as one of the most disappointing teams of the year. Still, they look good to get back on the right track in 2022.
Here’s your North Queensland Cowboys Season Review for 2021:
- The Season In Brief: Stats and Summary
- Takeaways From 2021
- Things I Liked: Drinkwater, Tabuai-Fidow, Val’s field goal
- 3-2-1: The halves dilemma, Reece Robson, Tabuai-Fidow
- Summer Notepad: Taumalolo’s Variation
- Preseason Prediction Throwback
- Way Too Early Thoughts On 2022
The Season In Brief
We’re summing up the NRL season in a few words before getting into the nitty-gritty and breaking down some of the key moments in 2021.
By The Numbers
The big bad number for the North Queensland Cowboys in 2021 is the 31.2 points conceded per game – the most in the NRL. With an attack scoring a little over 19 points per game and a yardage game that wasn’t as effective as many had hoped (10th), the Cowboys played a lot of the season on the back foot (47.5% possession).
The Season In 200 Words
Frustrating. Aimless. Head-scratching. The North Queensland Cowboys looked like a possible Top 8 contender before Round 1. They sat 7th on the ladder after Round 14 and had shown enough improvement at the time to suggest they might be able to keep their place through to September. However, ten consecutive defeats and only two competition points earned across the last 12 rounds of the season saw those finals hopes slip away. If not for a historically bad Bulldogs team, the Cowboys would have been in a fight to avoid the wooden spoon.
Todd Payten arrived in North Queensland with relatively high expectations following his time with the Warriors. That fight and resilience he managed to get out of the Kiwi club didn’t eventuate at the Cowboys, though. Very much an attack > defence style football side, they didn’t give themselves a chance playing with the NRL’s worst defence.
Jason Taumalolo didn’t have his best year as he experimented in a variety of roles. The edges lacked consistency and the backline is still up in the air heading into 2022. Scott Drinkwater provides hope for an improved attack next season, but it will be for nothing without a much better defence.
Takeaways From 2021
Things I Liked
Jason picks out a few moments, matches or players that he liked most throughout the 2021 NRL season.
Scott Drinkwater
Scott Drinkwater is an outrageously talented footballer in attack. He has his issues defensively, but not to the point where he is unplayable. His ability with the ball is more than good enough to make up the difference.
He played all 24 games this season while piling up 17 try assists to nicely back up his 19 try assists in 16 games in 2020.
We’ve all seen his highlight-reel moments. The 24-year-old can identify an opportunity and execute on the play as well as any halfback in the NRL. This skip pass across two teammates to Javid Bowen on the wing in Round 14 is a prime example of how Drinkwater can spy the slightest opportunity to create something out of nothing.
However, what I liked most is Drinkwater’s growing intent to become more surgical with his actions. Rather than waiting for the moment to make a play, he looked to create those moments himself.
Getting the ball on back-to-back tackles is something Kalyn Ponga is looking to do more often at the Knights. It’s an action Drinkwater can really dominate if he can strike up a consistent partnership with his fullback. Here he sends the ball inside to Valentine Holmes who comes close to breaking the line. At worst, he creates a quick play-the-ball for Drinkwater to run off.
It’s cramped and clunky but the intention is there. If he is a bit wider and gets downhill to engage the B and C defenders, the Cowboys are in a strong position to score out wide.
With a senior and organising half in Chad Townsend arriving next season, Drinkwater will have more opportunities to look for these moments.
Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow
Man, there is a lot to like about this kid.
You can’t teach speed and he is among the quickest players in the competition. He knows how to use it, too. This try back in Round 5 is one of the best this season and a great example of Tabuai-Fidow identifying an opportunity to use his greatest strength and executing it with a piece of skill that few could pull off at that speed.
The 20-year-old spent time at centre (9 games), wing (1 game) and fullback (4 games) throughout the season. It’s not ideal for him to spend so much time moving between positions, but it provided Payten with an idea of what he can offer and should make the decision on where to play him in 2022 a little bit easier.
It doesn’t make the most sense from a salary cap distribution perspective given fullback is one of the richest positions in the game, but Tabuai-Fidow ahead of Valentine Holmes at #1 should continue to be a consideration moving forward.
Round 12: Cowboys 29 def. Warriors 28
Forget for a minute that this was North Queensland’s last really good game and a win that saw them jump into the Top 8 at the time.
Few field goals have ever been struck as sweet as this:
~ Jason
3-2-1
True rugby league fans will know there’s nothing more legitimate than the Dally M’s 3-2-1 voting system…With that in mind, Oscar picks out three elements from the 2021 season that deserve a mention.
3 – The halves dilemma
It’s difficult to measure the impact of Michael Morgan’s sudden retirement in the early stages of this season. The fact that Morgan was hardly there the year before (six games in 2020) doesn’t make his absence again this year any less significant, and there is no doubt that a fully fit Morgan has a significant influence on this Cowboys side in 2021 – particularly when it comes to consistency and combinations. Morgan’s absence again forced North Queensland into a frantic search for a halves pairing, and they never quite settled. This season review reads an awful lot like their season preview back in March:
“North Queensland struggled through the 2020 season without ever really knowing what their first-choice 17 really looked like.” – Cowboys 2021 Season Preview
The problem goes back even further still. In 2019 and in the wake of Jonathon Thurston’s retirement, the Cowboys trialled six different halves pairings – eight if you count switching the same players between five-eighth to halfback. Six more combinations were tried again in 2020 and another four this year.
Scott Drinkwater feels like the only constant in North Queensland’s unsettled scrum base over the past two years, and so it comes as a surprise to remember he actually began this season as the Cowboys’ first-choice fullback. It’s made for a team that could not work cohesively to build pressure in attack as their roles constantly changed across the park from week to week.
That should change in 2022 with the arrival of Chad Townsend.
He’ll arrive without as much fanfare as some other new signings across the competition, but Townsend is exactly what the Cowboys need right now. After trialling a laughable amount of halves combinations over the past three seasons, North Queensland can all but lock Townsend and Drinkwater in for 2022 (barring injury). He won’t dish out multiple try assists every week but Townsend will make the right decisions with the ball in hand more often than not, kick to the corners, force line drop-outs and most importantly build pressure in attack. It’s something the Cowboys have struggled with at times this season but Drinkwater now has a halfback who can take the reins and free him up to pick his moments.
2 – Reece Robson
Alongside Townsend and Drinkwater, I think we can lock in another member of the Cowboys spine for 2022. Reece Robson was one of North Queensland’s best this year and whether or not he’s an 80-minute hooker he needs to be in the starting side next season.
Robson’s pass from dummy-half is one of the most underrated in the competition. He still has the odd error in his game but overall his passing is crisp and most importantly it is quick. It allows the Cowboys to attack wide of the ruck before the defence has a chance to adjust, and when they got it right the Cowboys exposed that defence for over-chasing from the inside.
The ball comes out so quickly to Jason Taumalolo here that the big fella has time to dig into the line and pass out the back smoothly. Robson’s bullet pass from half and Taumalolo’s ballplaying allows Drinkwater to get the ball in space with the defence beat on his inside and poor Sam Walker pays for it when he is forced to over chase on Valentine Holmes. Sorry for bringing this one back, Sam.
Robson has also looked good closer to the ruck. In this same game against the Roosters in Round 10, Robson’s fingerprints were all over Drinkwater’s first try earlier in the match.
On the first play Robson scoots out of half before dropping Taumalolo back under to isolate him onto Angus Crichton in the defensive line. Taumalolo wins the first contact as he usually does and manages to keep his feet while Robson points his teammates into spaces around the ruck. When Taumalolo plays the ball, Robson sends Crichton one way with a feint before holding up Victor Radley at second marker to angle Tom Gilbert back in behind the ruck. Gilbert finds his front to get another quick play-the-ball and Robson doesn’t need another invitation.
He feints right and darts left just like on the previous tackle, but this time he sells Radley a dummy and breaks through the line. Robson links with Drinkwater to beat James Tedesco at fullback, and the Cowboys are in. This was all Robson – four passes from dummy-half to march the Cowboys upfield and put his five-eighth over under the posts. He’s got the ballplaying smarts to be a threat from dummy half and with a 93% tackle efficiency he locks things up through the middle effectively in defence. I’m buying a few Robson stocks before the price rises.
1 – Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow
I didn’t do this intentionally, but having already indulged in my own thoughts about the key playmakers for North Queensland next season it’s only fair I round out the spine.
Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow needs to spend more time at fullback in 2022.
The Cowboys are most dangerous with ‘The Hammer’ out the back and Holmes providing elite finishing class out wide. The pair will more than likely rotate between positions throughout the season as injuries or form permit, but from the small sample size we’ve seen of Tabuai-Fidow at fullback he is the answer there long term.
Holmes and Scott Drinkwater formed a positive combination last season but that was in part out of necessity as the only two constants in North Queensland’s backline. With Chad Townsend settling the halves and Tabuai-Fidow hopefully staying on the field for longer in 2022, the Cowboys now have a core group of players they can build an attack around.
The key to Tabuai-Fidow unseating Holmes at fullback is his passing game. It’s the biggest critique of Holmes’ own fullback form and we haven’t seen enough of Tabuai-Fidow ballplaying to know if he will be an improvement. He is still a very raw talent but he finished this year at fullback strongly and with some stability around him in the halves next season, Tabuai-Fidow could be set for a breakout year in 2022.
~ Oscar
Summer Notepad
The NRL Notepad is a feature that has run all season. With the 2021 campaign wrapped up, we’re starting to think about what we’d like to see between now and March next year.
Taumalolo’s Variation
Jason Taumalolo averaged just 155 running metres per game in 2021 after cracking 207 metres per game in 2020 and 196 running metres per game the season before.
There has been a lot of speculation over how Taumalolo is being used and whether or not Todd Payten’s approach to preserving the 28-year-old is the right one. While there is no doubt that he wasn’t as effective this season compared to seasons past, it looks as though 2021 may act as a transition period for the hulking Tongan.
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