North Queensland Cowboys

Inaugural season: 1995

Home field: Queensland Country Bank Stadium, Townsville, Australia

Owner: Cowboys Leagues Club Ltd.

Team colors: Navy blue, white, and yellow

Overview

The North Queensland Cowboys is a professional rugby team that plays in Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL). The team was founded in the mid-1990s to take advantage of the popularity of the Brisbane Broncos, the state of Queensland’s most successful pro rugby team. However, the Cowboys spent much of their early history in the shadow of the Broncos, struggling to attract fans and win games. The Cowboys defined mediocrity for much of their first decade until the 2005 arrival of Johnathan Thurston. The future hall-of-famer won his first player of the year award that season and helped North Queensland make its first grand final appearance. In 2015, the Cowboys faced off against Brisbane in the only all-Queensland grand final in league history. Led by Thurston’s clutch kick in “golden” time, the Cowboys won a hard-fought match against their intrastate rival to capture their first-ever premiership.

History

Rugby originated in the early nineteenth century as a variation of English football, or soccer as it is known in North America. Named from its birthplace at the Rugby School in Warwickshire, England, the sport is a more hard-hitting type of football/soccer in which players are allowed to pick up and run with the ball. Opposing players are also allowed to tackle the ball carrier. Rugby caught on across England and eventually in the colonies of the British Empire. The sport was played in Australia on an amateur level until 1908, when several of the country’s best players formed its first professional league—the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL).

From its first season until 1982, the NSWRL consisted primarily of teams in the Sydney area. That season, the NSWRL added a team from Canberra, the nation’s capital. In 1988, the league expanded again, adding two Queensland-based teams—the Brisbane Broncos and the Gold Coast Chargers. The Broncos soon became one of the most successful teams in the NSWRL, winning back-to-back grand finals in 1992 and 1993. The Chargers, which were based just south of Brisbane near the border of New South Wales, struggled to establish an identity and folded after the 1998 season.

As Brisbane’s popularity increased, league officials wanted to place another team in Queensland to attract fans in the northern part of the state. In the early 1990s, they awarded a franchise to Townsville, a coastal city about 830 miles (1,335 kilometers) northwest of Brisbane. Franchise officials at first considered naming the team the Marlins, Stingrays, or Crocodiles, but decided on Cowboys after getting feedback from the public. As a nod to the region’s cattle industry, the franchise’s logo featured a pair of steer’s horns set above the team name. In 2003, North Queensland modified the logo to set the horns against a five-pointed gold star.

At the time North Queensland entered the league in 1995, Australian rugby was in the midst of a period of change that would reshape the sport. The NSWRL has rebranded itself as the Australian Rugby League (ARL) and faced competition from the rival Super League, which was to begin play in 1997. The Cowboys played their first two seasons in the ARL, finishing with a combined 8–35 record over that time. In 1997, North Queensland joined Brisbane as members of the Super League, finishing in last place while the Broncos won the league championship. The two-league experiment ended after only one season as the ARL and Super League merged in 1998 to form the National Rugby League. The Cowboys and Broncos became members of the NRL and finished the 1998 in much the same way as 1997—with North Queensland near the bottom of the standings and Brisbane winning another title. However, the Cowboys did set a record in 1998 by staging the biggest single-game comeback in league history, winning 36–28 against the Penrith Panthers after being down 26–0.

North Queensland continued to struggle in the early 2000s, finishing in last place in 2000 and running into financial difficulty in 2001. The Cowboys finally made their first finals series appearance in 2004, but it was not until 2005 that their fortunes truly changed. The finals series is a playoff-like tournament between the league’s top teams. Prior to that season, the club had signed star halfback Johnathan Thurston away from the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. With Thurston powering the offense, the Cowboys advanced to the grand final—the league’s championship game—before falling short against the Wests Tigers.

After another finals series appearance in 2007, the Cowboys slipped back to the pack for the next few years before rebounding in the early 2010s. North Queensland made the finals series each season from 2011–2017 and advanced to two grand finals during that span. Their 2015 run was capped off by a memorable championship game against Brisbane that marked the first time both participants in the grand final were from outside of New South Wales. In that matchup, the Broncos jumped out to a 16 – 12 lead late in the game before the Cowboys staged a desperate rally to tie the score at 16. In a sudden-death overtime period known as the “golden point,” Thurston kicked the winning goal to give North Queensland its first ever premiership—and a measure of revenge against its intrastate rival.

The Cowboys’ 2017 appearance in the grand final did not end as well, as the team was drubbed by the Melbourne Storm, 34–6. Thurston retired after the 2018 season, sending Northern Queensland into a tailspin. The Cowboys missed out on the finals series each season from 2018–2020, winning only 22 games in that span. Since joining the league in 1995, North Queensland has 262 wins and 356 losses, for a winning percentage of 40 percent—the second worst mark among current NRL teams as of 2020. That year, former assistant coach Todd Payten was named headcoach, but the 2020 season was also disappointing. In 2022, the Cowboys finished the regular season in third place and ultimately fell just one game short of the Grand Final. That year, Peyton was named Dally M Coach of the Year. In 2023, the Cowboys defeated the Wests Tigers 74-0, the largest victory of the NRL era. However, the club finished the season in eleventh place. The team plays its home games at Queensland Country Bank Stadium, a 25,000-seat facility in Townsville.

Notable players

The best player in team history is undoubtedly Johnathan Thurston, who is also considered to be one of the greatest players in Australian rugby history. Many observers list Thurston as the greatest halfback to ever play the sport. He is also widely considered as a lock to be named one of Australian rugby’s Immortals, a select group of players inducted into the Australian Rugby League Hall of Fame. As of 2024, only thirteen players have achieved the rank of Immortal.

Thurston played three seasons with Canterbury-Bankstown before joining the Cowboys in 2005. Prior to his retirement, he accumulated 2,182 points, 1,300 more than the second-place player on the franchise list. Thurston’s 2,222 career points scored are third most in league history as of 2020. Among the North Queensland franchise records he holds are most games played with 294, most goals with 923, most points in a season with 234 in 2014, and most points in a game, twice scoring 24. Thurston also scored 80 tries for the Cowboys, a mark that ranks fifth in franchise history. A goal is scored when a player kicks the ball through the goalposts and over the crossbar, while a try is cored when a player touches the ball down to the ground in an opponent’s goal area.

In addition, Thurston is the only player in history to win four Dally M Player of the Year awards, an honor given to the most outstanding player in the regular season. He won the award in 2005, 2007, and 2015, and shared the award in 2014. Thurston’s heroics in the 2015 grand final also earned him the Clive Churchill Medal, the award presented to the game’s most outstanding player.

Matthew Bowen played for the Cowboys from 2001–2013 and holds the franchise record for most career tries with 130. He led the NRL in tries scored in 2005 and 2007. Matt Sing played the final five years of his Australian rugby career with the Cowboys from 2002–2006. During that time, he scored 73 tries, good for seventh on the franchise list. His career mark of 159 tries—set mostly with the Sydney Roosters and Penrith Panthers—ranks eighth all time as of 2020.

Josh Hannay played for North Queensland from 1998–2006 and is second on the franchise points list with 882. His 343 goals trail only Thurston’s team mark. Jason Taumalolo began playing with the Cowboys at the age of seventeen in 2010. Since then, he has played in 196 games for the club, scoring 36 tries. In 2016, Taumalolo joined Thurston as a Dally M Player of the Year winner.

Bibliography

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Cadigan, Neil. 20 Years in the Saddle: North Queensland Cowboys 1995–2014. Playright Publishing, 2015.

Coomer, John. “North Queensland Cowboys: All-Time Greatest XIII.” Rugby League Opinions, 13 May 2017, rugbyleagueopinions.com/north-queensland-cowboys-greatest-team-best-ever-players-nrl-history/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Griffiths, Ellie. “A Brief History of Australia’s National Rugby League.” Culture Trip, 14 Dec. 2016, theculturetrip.com/pacific/australia/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-national-rugby-league-australia/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

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“North Queensland Cowboys Logo.” 1000 Logos, 27 Sept. 2022, 1000logos.net/north-queensland-cowboys-logo/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

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