Cowboys Season 2023 Review

 It's fair to say the Cowboys were massive over achievers in 2022.

Rewind to 2021. The Cowboys came 2nd last. 7 wins. We'd signed Chad Townsend, who as much as he was a premiership willing halfback, basically got run out of Cronulla on a rail. We'd also added Peta Hiku, an NRL journeyman. A handy center who was up to his 4th NRL club. There was hope in the north that the Cows would make the 8, but no real expectation. Yet we finished the season with 17 wins, finished 3rd on the table and damn near made the grand final. Cotter, Neame, Gilbert, Luki, Nanai, Dearden - all went from promising talent to blue chip first graders. Leilua was a mid season transfer from the Tigers, and he added some much needed grunt. Drinkwater went from showing flashes of quality to simply being bloody good, and Townsend was that on field navigator we desperately needed to sew things together - decent kicking, good distribution and a surrogate coach on the field.

Fair to say hopes were sky high rolling into 2023. There weren't a lot of new faces in the squad but the sensation was we'd damn near made the GF in 2022, and still had a lot of youth on the way up. Things started badly though, even before a ball was kicked - Leilua was charged with assault and was stood down under the NRL's no-fault-stand-down policy. He wouldn't ultimately play until late May. And that kind of set the tone for the season - between injuries & suspensions we just couldn't get any continuity. Nanai, Luki, Drinkwater, Holmes, Neame, Taumalolo, Cotter - they all missed decent chunks of the season.

Consider this: In 2022 we used 24 players. In 2023, we used 31. 

We also didn't see a heap of youngsters really stamp their mark on 2023. Chester, Valemei, Laybutt and Finefeuiaki all looked good, but only Finefeuiaki really properly established himself as a long term first grader. Dunn, Price,  Gosiewski, McIntyre, Shibasaki - they all got a decent look.

All that said, I do feel there were other factors that held us back in 2023. 

I don't think the squad's attitude was right. Todd Payten's football is quite simple, and all about intensity. Win the contact and you win games. Conversely you lose the contact and you're badly exposed. Seven rounds in we were 2 & 5. From there we won 3 of the next 4 and there was a feeling the ship might have been righted. Then came the 66-18 demolition at Leichhardt. A loss like that to a team rock bottom on the ladder was a crystal clear sign that our collective attitudes weren't right.

Maybe we simply thought after our successes in 2022 that it would all simply happen in 2023. I'm not close enough to the team to know for certain. But it was clear that the urgency and intensity was missing. Throw in a lack of squad continuity & depth on top of that, and it made for ugly watching at times.

Thankfully that Leichhardt flogging proved something of a rallying point. The team won 6 of the next 7, taking us back into the 8 with an 11-8 record. A loss to Gold Coast in round 22 proved critical though - not only did we lose to a side well below us on the table, but it also saw Val Holmes suspended for the rest of the season. He was a threat in attack and a strength in defense. Not a player we wanted missing for those final games. 

It's ultimately that loss to the Gold Coast that cost us the finals. We win that and we finish 7th.

There's been a lot of criticism of the football of Hiku, Feldt & Chad over the past few months. I don't think that's justified or accurate.

Let's start with Chad. He's very much a paint by numbers number 7. A good ball distributor, a solid kicker, gives us direction and a strong voice on field, but is rarely the guy to throw the last pass or go himself. 

If you doubt the fact he's a good kicker - the Cowboys are the number #1 team for kicking metres in 2023. (and we ran top 3 in 2022, where we were bottom 4 in both 2021 & 2020 (pre-Chad). Granted his kicking is fairly one dimensional: deep into the corners, almost exclusively bombs in attack. I've zero doubt though that's what Todd wants from him. He's the solid nail the basics guy, not the super creative 40-20 merchant. He leaves to creative stuff to Drinky, Val & Dearden. And that works well. He provides the scaffolding for those guys to work their magic. 

And when he came here, we had no foundations, no scaffolding. That's what he came here to provide. Anyone expecting him to magically morph into Thurston v2.0 is delusional. Don't get me wrong. It would be great if he also brought 40-20s, a threat with his running game, the ability to throw great short balls and a wonderfully potent & varied short kicking game, but that's not his go, and it's never been his go. And his connect the dots play at 7 got us damn near all the way to the granny last year. 

Now on to Hiku & Feldt - I put them both very much in the same boat. Both three quarters, both toward the end of their careers, and both play on the right. Now, playing in the three quarter line sucks when you're playing behind a beaten pack. Your central guys can't push up enough to put pressure on the ball players, the opposition overload one side and all of a sudden you're left 3 on 2 (or even worse), and the only thing you can do is rush in and try nip the thing in the bud. Check out Anthony Siebold's analysis (jump forward to 8 minutes - they use the Cowboys as an example): 

So Hiku & Feldt get stuck crappy in 3 on 2s with no where to go. And defending on the right they get that bit more traffic than Val & Taulagi (though it's also fair to say Val & Taulagi are probably stronger defenders). 

It's also worth noting both Hiku & Feldt also do loads coming out from the back, and Feldt is a real threat under the high ball. 

In 2022 we typically won the forward battles, typically maintained good field position, and thus kept the pressure off our three quarter line. in 2023, we haven't had that same ascendancy through our pack. And the three quarter line has borne the pressures of that. 

Look at the Penrith game in round 24 (where Chad, Feldt & Hiku again copped flack from the boo boys). Penrith ran for 2147 metres to our 1445. There's your problem right there - our pack was destroyed. There's bugger all a halfback, winger and centre can do when the opposition makes 50% more metres than you.  We had only 3 players who ran for over 150 metres - two of them were Feldt & Hiku. 

Now, Hiku is leaving in 2024, and Feldt is probably behind Valemei, so whatever you thought of them, they aren't going to be nearly as much of a factor in 2024. 

Chad though is interesting. Still signed, still on big dollars. We have Duffy (a boom youngster) in the wings and Jake Clifford returning (he was the first choice 7 in 2022). The idea is Chad will mentor those two (along with Tommy Dearden). But how that looks on field remains to be seen. I think one could argue that perhaps we've outgrown a paint by numbers halfback, but the flip side of that is Townsend has won a premiership playing 7, and we damn near made the Grand Final last year with him playing that same role.......

I think ultimately it comes down to how Todd Payten wants to structure our football moving forward. Simple direct footy and intensity have been the hallmarks of the footy we've played under Todd, but I do think that was the footy we were most capable of playing, especially in 2022. We didn't have the firepower or the weapons to play any other way. 

Now we do. Nanai, Luki, Leilua, Dearden, Drinkwater, Robson, Holmes. All serious attacking threats. So do we now change how we play in 2024?