Supporting North Queensland: Finals Week 2

HAVE you ever watched the footage of Seinfeld's Michael Richards doing stand-up?

If you haven't, check it out here. Go on, have a watch if you haven't already done so.

The first thing you'll notice on this clip is the racial slur that spews out of Richards' mouth. You're sitting there thinking, "did he just say that?"

"For real?"

And that's not the end of it. Next thing Richards is dropping the word "nigger" like he's deliberately trying to piss of the most number of people in the shortest possible time. Soon after people stream out of the theatre, appalled with what they're seeing and hearing. You can't blame them either - there's no condoning what Richards said under any possible set of ethics. You wouldn't think in this day and age that people would still feel that appropriate, yet we still saw it.

Last Friday night rugby league fans had our Michael Richards moment.

It was the 63rd minute of the Manly-North Queensland semi-final. Manly led by 4 points after the video referee had controversially awarded Jorge Taufua a try after he initially grounded the ball just short of the try line. The bomb had gone up; Matty Bowen misjudged the flight and jumped too early; Johnathan Thurston and Keiran Foran both went for the ball, which then went towards the Cowboys' tryline; Manly's Jamie Lyon  grabbed the ball, passed off the ground to Michael Oldfield who then grounded the ball on the off-chance it was a try.

On initial inspection it appeared that Foran had knocked the ball on when jumping against Thurston. Channel 9 commentators Ray Warren and Phil Gould both called it early: the way Thurston had jumped with both hands in the air compared to Foran with one hand tipped at an angle suggested a Manly knock-on. The video ref went through quite a few camera angles off Thurston and Foran jumping, all of which suggested - nay, screamed - knock-on.

But the more replays that flashed on the screen (the coverage showing what the video refs were looking at), the more likely it seemed they'd give a try. Suddenly the clips weren't of a leaping Thurston and Foran, but of Lyon passing the ball from the ground and whether a Cowboys player had a hand on him. The commentators were stunned - "surely they're not going to give this" - as was every rugby league fan around the world.

The replays then went to Oldfield putting the ball down, and suddenly we all realised. Just like the racist bile coming from Michael Richards' mouth, this was no joke.

Manly try.

The Cowboys were understandably rattled, throwing the ball around to try and make up the now 10-point deficit. They had their chances too: soon afterwards Brent Tate had an unmarked Ashley Graham on his right but elected to go himself. Taufua made a strong run from a kick after accidentally grounding the ball in-goal. The referees allowed the run, which goes against Section 8 (The Kick-Off and Drop-Out) 4. (c) which states:

4. The game is re-started with a drop-out by a defending player from the centre of his goal line if:
...
(c) a defending player touches down in the in-goal area.

Alas, it just wasn't our night. To be fair to Manly their defence was top-notch - it had taken some fancy footwork from forward James Tamou for the Cowboys to get their opener, while their second try came after Graham had helped strip the ball from a Manly player to gain possession.

This, then, wasn't the year. But after the trials of the last few years the team is definitely building to something. In Tamou and Matt Scott the Cowboys have the two best props in the game; Brent Tate and Kane Linnett two of the better centres; and Anthony Mitchell and Michael Morgan two local lads destined to play a big part in their local team's future. And that's without mentioning the pleasure that Bowen and Thurston bring every week they play together: while we expected Thurston's genius, Bowen's renaissance was one of the great stories of the 2012 National Rugby League season.

All this season I've been following the official North Queensland Cowboys Twitter feed (@nthqldcowboys); it never ceases to amaze me the support people have for the club. Having only been to Townsville twice since we left in 1983 I'm yet to experience a home game up there, but reading the retweets about people travelling 10 hours+ each way just to get to a game shows the support that's out there for one of the NRL's least fashionable clubs.

Naturally we're all disappointed at how the season ended, but let's hope the team uses the pain of defeat to lead us to victory in 2013.


NORTH QUEENSLAND COWBOYS 12 (Tamou, Winterstein tries; Thurston 2/2 goals) lost to Manly Sea-Eagles 22.