A Gavin Cooper try two minutes from fulltime secured a comeback victory for North Queensland over Newcastle on Friday night, ending a five-game home losing streak.
Jonathan Thurston inspired the second-half comeback, scoring once and having a hand in the other two tries as the Cowboys edged Newcastle 20-18.
Two tries from Lachlan Fitzgibbon and one from Aidan Guerra, against one from Justin O’Neill, gave the Knights an 18-6 half-time advantage.
Coen Hess and Thurston scored within three minutes of each other early in the second half, but with Ken Sio more accurate with his conversions, the hosts were still behind until the dramatic late try.
The exciting finish was in stark contrast to the way the Cowboys started.
After two minutes Jack Cogger drew Thurston then played in Fitzgibbon who burst through a big gap before darting inside Te Maire Martin for the Knights to open the scoring.
The second try saw Danny Levi take the play the ball two metres out and feed Aidan Guerra who broke the line untouched.
The Cowboys were allowed back into the game at the mid-point of the first half when Levi was sent to the sin bin.
And within two minutes they were on the board as a run-around between Thurston and Cooper led to the Cowboys captain finding O’Neill alone on the touchline for an easy try.
The Knights’ lead was restored seven minutes before the break when Fitzgibbon scored again.
After stinging words from Paul Green, the Cowboys came out a better side and Thurston found Hess on the right flank and he burst through two tackles to score.
The Cowboys scored again through Thurston.
As time was running out and with the Cowboys staring at a sixth-straight defeat, it was Thurston who found Martin who passed to Cooper to score.
While admitting it was far from the most fluid performance, Green was delighted at the character shown by his team.
“It was a little bit ugly at times but there was a massive effort from across the board which I was really pleased to see as it shows it means something to the boys,” Green said.
“That character is something we’ve built up over the years and at times we thought it would show up and it hasn’t.”
Knights coach Nathan Brown was disgusted at his side’s capitulation.
“In the first half we were obviously by far the better team, but we played poor in the second half,” Brown said.
“Our attitude was to go out and score more points and we didn’t build any pressure on at all.
“We’re playing Johnathan Thurston and he said ‘I’ll just keep playing it in the in-goal until you’re too tired to attack’.”
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