Cowboys coach Todd Payten can have no complaints if the club gives him the boot based on their defensive “effort”.
North Queensland were again woeful in defence on Thursday night as the Dolphins revived their NRL finals hopes with a 43-24 cruise at Suncorp Stadium.
Payten’s position is under immense pressure as the Cowboys’ season slips away and he has been unable to get the team up to scratch at the defensive end so the board will be justified if they decide to punt him despite another season remaining on his contract.
The Phins have improved to a 9-9 record and have the second-best for-and-against record in the NRL at +169 but they could still finish outside the top eight by the end of the round if other results don’t go their way.
1. Dolphins in cruise control
It was like watching a first-grade side playing against the reserves in an opposed training session for large portions of Thursday night’s match.
Dolphins players were lining up to score at one stage, particularly through the Cowboys’ embarrassingly porous left edge.
They broke the line 10 times all up and should have broken the half-century mark if not for a couple of certain tries going begging when the Dolphins were spoilt for choice and ended up botching the final pass.
The Dolphins have the second-best attack in the NRL, following Melbourne in breaking the 500-point barrier during their Cowboys cakewalk.
And their defence is not too shabby either – only six sides have conceded less.
But they are paying the price for a slow start to the season when their opening round was disrupted by a cyclone, which led to their match being transferred to Sydney.
They lost that one to Souths after a couple of players dropped out on the eve of the match to stay home with their families and it took them a while to hit their stride.
If they had a 2-2 start to the year or were even able to jag one of those four losses in the opening month, they could be as high as sixth rather than 10th heading into this round.
Isaiya Katoa was again the maestro in attack as he disected the Cowboys, creating four line breaks with makeshift five-eighth Jake Averillo benefitting from the attention on the No.7, crossing for two tries and racking up 197 running metres.
The Dolphins will be a very dangerous opponent if they qualify for the playoffs, they’ve just got to get there.
They get to rest their feet next week before a crucial four-game stretch where they face the Warriors, Roosters, Broncos and Sea Eagles which will decide whether they can reach the finals in just their third year in the big league.
2. Cowboys collapse
The heat was on the Cowboys with their season pretty much on the line.
And they melted.
They will finish Round 20 adrift of eighth spot by seven points and with seven rounds to go, their playoff prospects are in ruins.
Like most teams, they’ve had injury woes but nothing too horrific.
There are no excuses for a team this talented to be in 12th spot and falling further.
Nobody likes to see a coach get tapped on the shoulder but it now appears inevitable that Todd Payten will be told his services are no longer required in the near future.
Under his watch, the Cowboys are regressing rapidly in his fifth year in charge. Their surprise run to the 2022 preliminary final seems like an eternity ago.
3. Scoreline flatters North Qld
The frightening prospect for the Cowboys is that the final score could have been a helluva lot worse.
Tabuai-Fidow bombed a certain try when he fumbled a Herbie Farnworth assist with the line wide open and a few cut-out passes to the wings ended up bouncing away from support players.
After Oryn Keeley and Murray Taulagi traded tries within the first seven minutes, that kind of tit for tat represented the Cowboys’ only chance to stick with the Phins.
But a long-range sprint from a dropped ball by Jake Averillo was followed by Farnworth breaking free down the left edge to set up the Hammer for his first strike and an 18-6 buffer.
Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow breaks away. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Tabuai-Fidow cruised in again before the break and when Harrison Graham and Jamayne Isaako crossed early in the second half, the Phins were up by 28 with a cricket score beckoning.
Taulagi notched his second before limping off with a calf injury, then Scott Drinkwater and Dearden scooted over to bring the visitors back to a 10-point deficit with 15 minutes on the clock.
But a penalty goal and another Averillo four-pointer from deep in Dolphins territory sealed the deal.
4. Rare piece of succession success
Kristian Woolf looked like he was going to end up the latest name on the list of coaches who struggled to follow in Wayne Bennett’s footsteps.
After the first four rounds, the Dolphins were winless and the parallels to Ivan Henjak, Anthony Griffin, Steve Price, Rick Stone and Jason Demetriou were being brought up.
But the long-term Tonga national coach did not panic and even though his side has had a rougher run with injuries than pretty much every other team this year, he has managed to mould the Phins into a potent unit, particularly in attack, revolving around Isaiya Katoa and Tabuai-Fidow.
Succession plans for coaches don’t always work well in professional sport – the Tim Sheens to Benji Marshall transition at the Wests Tigers ended in a debacle while in that silly game they play in the southern states, Collingwood’s switch from Mick Malthouse to Nathan Buckley was another bumpy one with a lack of trust from each party prompting Malthouse to walk early.
Whether the Phins make the finals or not is still a 50-50 proposition at best but under the circumstances, Woolf’s first season as head coach has been a howling success.
5. Isaako. Is good.
The Broncos have allowed a lot of good players to leave the club in recent years.
Jamayne Isaako is not as high profile as Tom Dearden, Xavier Coates or Farnworth but he’s the kind of player that every team needs.
Reliable, capable and durable.
In fact he has played every match of the Dolphins’s first three seasons.
The goal-kicking winger has also racked up more than 200 points each season, surpassing the milestone with his third conversion against the Cowboys.
But he is not just a sharpshooter with the boot with 45 tries in 65 games making up a large part of his prolific pointscoring.
The Kick: Defence diabolical
North Queenslan Cowboys. No D.
Not a new joke, but appropriate. And the Cowboys’ defence for much of the match on Thursday night was laughable.
“They’re not trusting their inside men. They’re all over the shop,” former Kangaroos captain Darren Lockyer said on Nine commentary.
Time and again some Cowboys defenders would rush in while others would hold their width.
They were routinely brushed aside as Dolphins ball runners shot through gaps.
At some point, the question needs to be asked – why are they so bad at the defensive end, the worst in the NRL, even more toothless than the last-placed Titans?
North Queensland’s players are all at the very least, solid first-graders – they’re no mugs, but the systems in place and most importantly, the communication is third rate.
