One word summed up North Queensland’s mood after the NRL pre-season title favourites slumped to their third straight loss, according to Johnathan Thurston – embarrassed.
And this time the Cowboys playmaker could not be accused of being a “drama queen”.
Thurston ran out against Brisbane on Friday night still sporting a shiner from last round’s bruising encounter with Newcastle, a game the Cowboys copped the “drama queen” tag for complaining about their No.7 being illegally targeted.
There were plenty of complaints again from North Queensland following their 44-22 loss to the Broncos at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night.
But this time the out of sorts Cowboys admitted they only had themselves to blame after slumping to a 0-3 season start.
Asked to sum up the mood, Thurston said: “Pretty embarrassed.
“I would say our confidence is shot at the moment.
“Last year we based our game on defence and we have been like turnstiles the first three rounds – we have a lot of work to do.”
Cowboys coach Paul Green took exception to Wayne Bennett’s “drama queen” stance ahead of the match.
But the North Queensland mentor agreed with the master mentor’s post-match assessment that the Cowboys “didn’t turn up” in the eight tries to four thrashing.
“That’s a fair assessment,” he said.
The Cowboys had vowed to turn their traditional slow starts around in 2015 and live up to their early title favouritism in their 20th anniversary year.
Unfortunately, it has been more of the same – and history already indicates there will be no fairytale ending to their milestone season.
In the modern era no team has turned around a 0-3 season start and gone on to win the premiership.
Overall only two teams have been able to do it – the last being South Sydney way back in 1953.
But Green could not look any further than the coming weeks after Brisbane notched their biggest derby win since their 36-2 Suncorp Stadium triumph in 2008.
And even that did not look pretty.
North Queensland host Melbourne next week followed by Penrith and South Sydney away.
