North Queensland Cowboys vs Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs 1300SMILES Stadium, Thursday 21 July 2016 Kick Off 7:50pm 1. Lachlan Coote 2. Javid Bowen 3. Justin O'Neill 4. Kane Linnett 5. Antonio Winterstein 6. Michael Morgan 7. Johnathan Thurston 8. Matthew Scott 9. Jake Granville 10. James Tamou 11. Gavin Cooper 12. Ethan Lowe 13. Jason Taumalolo Interchange: 14. Rory Kostjasyn 15. John Asiata 16. Scott Bolton 17. Ben Hannant 1. William Hopoate 2. Brett Morris 3. Josh Morris 4. Curtis Rona 5. Sam Perrett 6. Josh Reynolds 7. Moses Mbye 8. Aiden Tolman 9. Michael Lichaa 10. James Graham 11. Josh Jackson 12. Greg Eastwood 13. David Klemmer Interchange: 14. Sam Kasiano 15. Tony Williams 16. Tim Browne 17. Raymond Faitala-Mariner 19. Danny Fualalo 20. Craig Garvey
Lol at them batting off over that defensive kick from Thurston with a minute to go that cost them another scoring opportunity
Mm. I think it was more the kick in itself. It was the wrong option but the execution was sublime. He's got it on a string tonight.
So good to see the Cowboys kick on without JT on the field. Good shit. Our pack has been immense tonight.
Its a rare moment of joy to be able to say we've kept 4 NSW teams to 0 this year. Quite happy. Awesome performance tonight.
They're all saying reality check. What reality check? That's only the case if you couldn't see, months ago, how ordinary Canterbury are.
That's a paddlin'. It's looking easier for the Warriors to get into the top 4 when there are only 3 other decent teams in the comp
Yeah 100% Head and shoulders above the next best side for mine. Their soft underbelly though is Tamou, Taumololo and Scott sitting off together for the same 25 minute period. I imagine a good coach will try and target that at some point. Whether they nail it or not who knows. I rate Bolton and Hannant so I'm not sure anyone could pull it off.
Definitely, I was saying this weeks ago, I only caught the first 25mins last night, but a look at the stats shows an all too familiar pattern: Try scoring times: 4th min, 8th min, 23rd min 45th min 65th min, 70th min, 80th min Did they pull Granvilla off at the same time too?
Don't really remember. They went close a few times in that dry period though tbf. Then Thurston went off at the 45 minute mark so Kostjaysn went to halfback.
Comparatively a lot less bombing to the corners from the Cows which is good to see. A lot of the other sides are ridiculously formulaic in their structure, drug up the field, push an offload/get a forward running off another forward on tackle 3-4, run two second man plays wide, then kick high to the corner as a last resort. Cows are blessed with 4 good kicking options so there's less pressure on each of them behind a dominant pack, but its good to see some variety working, Seems NRL has been wash, rinse, repeat of Storm structures for a decade.
Cowboys' weakness is dominance on the ground. Good sides will exploit their technical deficiencies in the ruck. But they are so clearly the best attacking side in the comp.
Yep their ability to slow down the play the ball is a problem albeit not a huge one but a problem no less.
It is an issue. The problem is that Tamou would lose all confidence if dropped to the bench and he'd be the main candidate. I don't think there's an easy solution but at least it's a good problem.
Could always start with Taumalolo on the bench and bring him on for impact when the other two go off. The main issue for me with those 3 being off was mostly until this game Bolton and Hannant were performing poorly over the last month or more.
You just need one of those 3 to play out the whole first half or at least 35 minutes of it, they're all capable of doing it. Before doing his ACL, Hargreaves would do it often for us and it just makes managing your bench a million times easier.
