Grindstone Cowboys: Payten made his name with defence - but it’s their lack of attack that’s holding them back

It’s been, at best, a mixed year for Todd Payten and the North Queensland Cowboys.

The coach has come under fire in recent weeks for the poor performances of his side, with his side 0-3 in the last month and entering a must-win Friday night clash with Dolphins, and snapped at a reporter in the press conference following their defeat to Cronulla last Thursday night.

Pressed on whether his side had taken it too easy in their bye week beforehand, Payten bristled. 

“Were you at training?” snapped the coach.

“Our training sessions were short, sharp and intense. Our group respond better when they are relaxed.

“If I’m amped up or I am consistently into our players we know that pushes my energy on to them and they tighten up.

“There was no mucking around or hijinx, everyone was focused and got their job done. We were just outplayed in the end.”

It was a rare crack in the armour of the coach, who has usually been serene with the media despite a record thrashing and a record victory – against the same opponent – in the same season.

Payten has always shown an ability to meet triumph and disaster and treat both imposters the same – something that he will surely be leaning on in review of the 2023 season, especially if his side do not make the Finals.

He might well look at 2021, when the Cowboys finished 15th, as perhaps an unfair reflection on how good his team actually were. 

Similarly, he might look at 2022, when they finished third, and wonder if the Cowboys were actually as good as their ladder placement suggested.

Should they miss the eight in 2023, there will be an inquest, and it should be clear where the issue lies. It’s with the ball.

Last season’s success came almost exclusively from their defence, which Payten rarely missed an opportunity to mention.

He had halved the amount of points conceded within a year from 748 in 2021 to 361 in 2022, and had every right to point to it as a calling card.

(Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

Come the crunch, however, the differentiating factor in the Preliminary Final defeat to Parramatta was elite spine talent, with Mitch Moses, Dylan Brown and Clint Gutherson levels above Chad Townsend, Tom Dearden and Scott Drinkwater. 

The Cowboys won the possession and territory battle with ease, but were thrashed in the moments that mattered. 

Worryingly for Payten, nothing was done to rectify this recruitment and North Queensland entered this season without any improvements. 

Townsend, who many had thought was already a little one-paced, was a year older and the plan appeared to be to give Drinkwater and Dearden more licence, with both also older and wider.

When those two have been on, that plan has worked – but it’s been increasingly easy to mark both out of the game and severely limit the Cowboys as a result.

The biggest problem is that they’re either exceptional or terrible with the footy, and with little middle ground.

They average 3.83 line breaks a game, which is fairly middling, but on three occasions, they have had more than eight line breaks while on eight occasions, they’ve had two or fewer.

Similarly, they average 19 line engagements per game – again, middle of the pack – but they have only achieved that total in seven of their 22 matches.

Another: their 3.86 tries per game is pretty much league average, but they’ve only hit that eight times, with the stats blown out by three massive wins, two of which were against the Dragons and Tigers and the third in their win over Melbourne, when they had been tying at the break before producing their best 40 minutes of the season.

One can drill down further into this phenomenon. Drinkwater is currently forth in the NRL for line break assists with 27, but 11 of them came in those three games, with another ten in four more games. In 12 matches, he has one or fewer. Stop him, and you stop the Cowboys.

Dearden doesn’t fare any better. His numbers for runs and line engagements are quite solid across the year, but vary wildly in how successful they have been: his best performance garnered three line breaks, 200m and ten tackle busts in the Tigers beatdown but in most games are nowhere near that.

Tom Dearden is tackled. (Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

Townsend is essentially a specialist kicker and organiser at this stage, with very high numbers for touches and still exceptional distances off the boot, but never more than one line break assist in any one game.

Statistically, he profiles at a similar level to Brandon Wakeham – not a great comparison if you’re intention is to challenge at the top of the NRL.

The offensive kicking has been a major issue. Townsend has six kick try assists, Drinkwater has three and Dearden none, for a total of nine this year – last season, the same trio combined for 24. Jeremiah Nanai, who scored 17 tries in 2022, has just six this time around – probably in no small part due to the chance in attacking kicking.

Nanai is an interesting place to understand the second part of where the Cowboys attack goes wrong, which is in the forwards. 

The backrower is an unfair target given how many games he has missed this year, but he is emblematic of a wider problem: the lack of creativity in the forwards.

North Queensland have no problems at all in getting into position, as they get a lot of ball, make few errors and consequently make bulk metres. They’re fifth for yardage, which is excellent.

They’ve long focussed on completions over creativity, sitting at 80% overall, but it comes at the expense of risk. 

The Cowboys have made the second fewest offloads all year – behind the also conservative Warriors – and are one of the few sides that don’t play with any sort of ball-playing forward.

The pack has been fairly stable, with Jordan McLean, Reuben Cotter, Reece Robson, Coen Hess, Jake Granville and Jamayne Taunoa-Brown involved in almost every game.

Nanai and Jason Taumalolo have missed time, as has Heilum Luki and Luciano Leilua, but beyond that, it’s a fairly settled unit.

(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

None of them would be described as a creative player, with bash-and-barge, no nonsense work prioritised. That’s fine, if you’re getting that spark elsewhere, but it does make it a relatively easy task to spot up the designated flair players.

When Nanai and Val Holmes play, that is less of a problem as they can offer spark wider from the ruck, but for the most part, it’s pedestrian stuff.

The good news is that the second part of the attacking issue is easier to fix than the first. Payten will struggle to find a new halfback overnight – though Townsend’s deal is up at the end of next year – and should be aiming to drastically improve in that area. 

In the forwards, he certainly has the talent to play more expansively. Taumalolo, Leilua and Nanai all have high skill levels and could be trusted with more freedom, which Hess and Cotter have shown in the past that they, too, are capable of more than workhorse roles.

Payten was right to focus on the defence right up, and to prioritise staying in games to improve results. In 2022, that paid off with a much higher finish than many expected.

But in 2023, what made the Cowboys good is becoming the same thing that stops them going to the next level. If they are to improve in a proper Premiership threat, it’ll be their attack that does it.