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PRENTICE: Cowboys and Wallabies nail their moment in time

JT delivers the Cowboys a premiership. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)
Expert
13th October, 2015
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Every now and then, sport has the ability to grab one by the throat and grip the watcher. The watcher becomes powerless until the drama unfolds and is ultimately played out.

I have been enormously privileged in my life as a sports writer to have witnessed many such moments.

But two incredible football games in as many weeks will take some beating.

The late, late drama in the Cowboys-Broncos NRL grand final provided a chapter in sporting theatre like no other.

I’ve seen hundreds of close finishes in rugby league – all exciting in their own right – but none that can really stand with Johnathan Thurston and the Cowboys’ Houdini-like finale against a Brisbane team that was all but crowned the 2015 premier.

I was at the ground, a rarity for me in these comfy days of free-to-air and pay-TV coverage, but an opportunity arose to go and what I witnessed was riveting; sport at its absolute zenith.

The 1989 rugby league decider between Canberra and Balmain was a gem. I was working that day for The Daily Mirror and the late heroics by the Raiders made it a game to savour forever. It was perhaps the best I’d seen, and quite possibly, the best I would ever see.

It turned out to be Canberra’s maiden competition win and there were amazing cameos from the likes of John Ferguson, Chris O’Sullivan, Laurie Daley and Bradley Clyde. For decades this was not only the best grand final I’d witnessed; it was the very best game into the bargain.

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This year’s grand, grand final has me reassessing the whole shebang.

Both Brisbane and North Queensland played out of their skins in this decider.

The Broncos enjoyed the box seat for so long but got ankle-tapped by the sporting Gods who were clearly keen to see a football fairytale.

It was JT’s time, the champion half-back’s destiny. He missed his first cue but nailed the second to create history for the Cowboys and those in North Queensland are still in celebratory mode.

As a first-hand watcher, the last few minutes of regulation time were spell-binding. And then we were treated to the golden point period when Thurston ultimately did the business.

I truly loved it – sport doesn’t get better than that.

Or does it?

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This writer dragged himself out of bed early on Sunday morning for the Wallabies versus Wales game.

At the start, I thought Australia would win if Michael Cheika’s men seized their goal-kicking chances in what shaped as a neck-and-neck battle between two evenly matched nations.

The game was incredibly tight but morphed into an epic when Australia had two players yellow-carded midway through the second half.

Not a hope, I thought, as the Welsh came at our guys like a red tsunami. And that giant wave kept on coming.

Surely, the 13-man Wallabies would crack under such incredible pressure, but as the minutes agonisingly ticked by the men in gold seemed to grow stronger.

The odds against Australia were seemingly astronomical. No way could our Wallabies hold on.

But they triumphed, just as the Cowboys had done a week earlier, against those Everest-high odds for a very famous victory.

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This is why we love sport. Nothing is a given.

Extraordinary reserves of character can surface from within when all seems forlorn and lost.

I feel blessed to have witnessed these two phenomenal finishes to sporting contests that took place a week apart.

Live sport is like the gritty, gutsy, never-say-die Cowboys and Wallabies.

Unbearably close in their desperate time of need and in the end, undeniable.

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