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Bradbury (definition): To win as a result of miraculous circumstance, despite being in a losing position.
When it was safe to go back on social media yesterday afternoon after the post-election froth, one of the funnier memes doing the rounds was an image of Tony Abbot’s peculiar head atop the triumphant Stephen Bradbury’s body from his famous 2002 Winter Olympics victory.
And while it may be too much to ask all seven of their finals opponents to implode into a scrum of divisive in-fighting and backroom power plays, the odds of a similar meme popping up sporting a guffawing Johnathan Thurston are shrinking faster than the Australian Democrats’ primary vote.
For in 2013, the North Queensland Cowboys have well and truly taken on the Bradbury mantle of the semi-finals.
A bit like how a bloke who collects animatronic dinosaurs is now on the verge of being a publicly elected member of parliament, no one is 100 percent why or how this has happened, but are bloody interested to see how things evolve nevertheless!
There is nay a person who can say a bad word about the men from North Queensland, so to have seen them wallowing at the bottom of the ballot for most of the year was quite depressing, and utterly perplexing.
The last time something looked so good on paper and so useless in real life it was the pair of ‘X-Ray’ glasses you ordered from the back of a Phantom comic as a kid, only this time instead of just you getting a headache it was rugby league lovers in general.
After trudging on unsuccessfully, coach Neil Henry got told he had a couple of months to get out of town and, well, with the season on the home stretch that should have been the end of that.
I remember specifically writing following the move I was certain the players would all dig deep, and knuckle down at training to send Henry out a winner.
Unfortunately this was on a Twitter page called ‘Sh*t no NRL fan says’, but from the outside this appears to be exactly what has happened.
The Cowboys have been on fire, and have been the best performing side of the last month.
Granted, they have been playing sudden death football for a good while now, which generally will get a team to lift, but for a long time they simply did not look like they had it in them.
Now they get to play a side in the Sharks who they defeated just recently, have an entire state cramming onto the bandwagon and a coach who has gone from shy, mousey type to the hottest chick in the club.
Ever since the Tigers did the improbable in 2005 it has been realised a team can play and actually win, not just reach, the game’s biggest day after spending half the season picking out Mad Monday costumes.
With a superstar roster and a coach with nothing to lose there is little doubt the Cowboys can mimic Wests’ magic moment.
It’s just whether the rest of the competition is still on their feet.
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