North Queensland skipper Jason Taumalolo has done his talking on the field as the Cowboys bounced back with a comprehensive 26-6 NRL victory over Canberra.
The talismanic forward has been linked away from the club of late, despite being midway through a ten-year deal, but turned in a performance of the highest quality to get the Cowboys off the mark for 2022.
“Heading into last week’s game, without a trial match, last week was all about blowing out the cobwebs and trying to get the motor going again,” said Taumalolo.
“Tonight, I felt a lot better and the outside noise was a bit of a ‘poke the bear’ moment for me. It’s good to be out there and running freely again.
“We’re still Round 2, I’m building each week and hopefully I can improve with every round.”
Three unanswered tries in the second half to Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, Kyle Feldt and Jeremiah Nanai propelled the hosts to victory as the error-strewn Raiders struggled to compete in Townsville on Saturday night.
It wasn’t all great news for North Queensland: forward Mitch Dunn has suffered a reported ACL tear in the first half of their game with the Canberra Raiders in Townsville.
Dunn went over in classic ACL style, under no pressure from an opponent, leading to immediate fears that he has seriously injured his knee.
Dunn joins Storm star George Jennings, who did his last week against the Wests Tigers, as well as Shawn Blore and Harley Smith-Shields who suffered theirs in training before the start of the year.
Ricky Stuart made no excuses for his team’s performance.
“It’s pretty simple,” he told the post-match press conference. “When you have less football, complete less sets and make more errors than your oppositions, it’ll be very hard to win.
“We made it very difficult for ourselves tonight in that regard. Take nothing away from the Cowboys, they played well, but they had a lot of football and we were very indisciplined with it in regards to our completions and finishing our sets off.
“It’s frustrating coaching a football team when that happens, and I can see that very clearly. You’re not going to win a game of football with those statistics.”
The performance was a great response by Todd Payten’s side after their miserable 6-4 first-round loss to the Bulldogs.
And it was led by Taumalolo – the subject of much speculation about his relationship with Payten during the week – who rampaged through the middle on his way to 141 running metres and two tackle busts.
“It’s a different feeling to last Sunday,” said Payten. “We were all pretty gutted last week, and it was pretty angry.
“But we didn’t panic and if we keep turning up for each other and defending like that, we’ll be enjoying beers in the dressing sheds more often than not.
“Credit to the lads, they were terrific through the week. Even at periods in last week’s game, our connection was really strong but we were just too clunky at important parts of the game. If I’m being honest, I think we were still clunky tonight at stages but there’s so much growth that’s left.
“We put it to bed pretty quickly. We do a review the next day and it was pretty obvious where we won and lost the game.
“The effort that we showed: it’s three games on the trot that we’ve conceded six points. Were we good enough to do that last year? The answer’s no.
“I know we’re a better team but I also understand that we’re only Round 2 and we’ve got a lot of footy left.”
Canberra completed just 61% of their sets as the Cowboys suffocated the Raiders on defence and and dominated possession, gaining easy metres up the middle.
That issue was highlighted in the 55th minute, when Feldt’s kick return got the Cowboys valuable metres out from his own line as his side went the length of the field in their set.
On the fifth tackle Chad Townsend kicked to the left edge and Tabuai-Fidow soared over his opposite number to gather and break free, contorting through Hudson Young’s tackle to reach out and score.
The Cowboys were soon in again when Jake Granville’s sloppy dummy half pass hit the deck and Peta Hiku had the presence of mind to kick the ball through and it sat up perfectly for Feldt to score his first try of the season.
Tom Dearden’s high kick on the next set then found a flying Nanai, with the 19-year-old leaping to gather and score under the posts to ice the game with eight minutes to play.
In the opening stanza, North Queensland were first to strike in the sixth minute making the Raiders pay for errors in their own half.
Dearden swung left and his skip-pass found Murray Taulagi who kept the ball out in his left hand and tipped-toed along the sideline whilst fending to score.
After only scoring four points in round one, the message was clear in North Queensland’s camp to take any points on offer, and they did twice with Valentine Holmes kicking two penalties to keep the scoreboard ticking.
But in the 31st minute the Raiders found a crack in the Cowboys’ defensive line as Corey Harawira-Naera fought through four tacklers near the line to score before converting his own try.
The Cowboys led 8-6 at halftime.
© AAP
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