Todd Payten, the coach of the Queensland Cowboys, has criticized his team for their appalling performance on Good Friday against the Brisbane Broncos, claiming that the team wouldn’t have defeated the Temora Dragons.
Despite missing Payne Haas and Brendan Piakura for the game against their Queensland rivals, the Cowboys were at best careless for the most of their loss in terrible weather to a fiery Broncos team that started to show some of the spark that made them grand finalists last year.
The Townsville team finished with a dismal 56% against the Broncos and committed 17 mistakes in a performance the team would rather forget.
The Cowboys’ season has come to an end after three straight victories, and Payten’s dissatisfaction was evident after the game.
At the news conference following the game, Payten said, “Come down to Brisbane, it’s our biggest club game of the year and we just gave our opposition too many shots inside our own half.”
Giving a strong attacking side too many shots will give them too many chances to win, thus you can’t do that and we wouldn’t defeat the Temora Dragons by doing so.
To be honest, I believed that we ought to have trailed by a larger margin at the break. In the game’s most disappointing moment, Tommy Dearden makes a fantastic defensive play.
It was one of the better ones I’ve seen in a while, but after that, there was no spark or response. Well, so here we are, having a serious reality check on some of our football.
Pulling him down in the corner gave us an opportunity to tie the game, but we were unable to take advantage of it. It was fantastic, a match-turner.
Payten said North Queensland’s defence needs to get better, even if he praised Dearden’s effort.
Payten stated, “Our defense needs to get better. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with it during the first three rounds anyway. When you’re forcing yourself to do too much of it, you’re going to miss tackles.”
