• Brent Tate thought all the celebrations of his official farewell game had ended when the full-time siren blew on Saturday night. He was standing in the background, waiting to walk off the field behind his teammates when they decided to give him the honour of carrying him off 1300SMILES Stadium for the last time. Two of our biggest Cowboys – James Tamou and Jason Taumalolo – were given the job.
• Qualifying for the finals has given Johnathan Thurston the chance to set a new Cowboys record for points in a season. He has a personal best of 208 so far to be 22 points behind the record set by Josh Hannay in 2003. JT finished the home and away season as the NRL’s leading points-scorer, one ahead of the Roosters’ James Maloney. That means he’ll pick up at least one prize on Dally M Medal night.
• The accolades keep coming for JT. He’s finished as the joint winner of the Warren Ryan Medal awarded by the ABC Grandstand team. JT was level on points with Brisbane’s Ben Hunt and Manly’s Daly Cherry-Evans.
• We rarely find anything that isn’t superlative about our champion halfback, but here’s something. His goalkicking percentage of 74.55% (82 from 110) in 2014 is his lowest of his career so far but there’s still time for him to fix that.
• Even though their Intrust Super Cup season is over, the Cowboys who have spent the majority of their season with the Mackay Cutters are still putting in the hard work at training. Curtis Rona, John Asiata, Anthony Mitchell, Sam Hoare and Zac Santo have to maintain their fitness and knowledge on the NRL squad’s game plan in case they're needed during the finals series.
• Glenn Hall has continued a remarkable record of consistency for the Cowboys this season. When he runs out against the Broncos on Saturday night, it will be the fourth time in four years that he has played at least 23 matches in a season for North Queensland.
• Cowboys fans will get the chance to see our 2015 signing Kelepi Tanginoa in action on Saturday night. He’ll line up for the Parramatta Eels against Brisbane in the NYC qualifying final that kicks off at 5.15pm.
• Not only was Saturday night’s crowd of 22,521 the biggest of the season at 1300SMILES Stadium, we drew our largest audience of the year on Fox Sports – 344,000.
• The NYC season is over and we can now reveal that three players – forwards Corey Jensen, Andrew Niemoeller and David Munro – took part in all 24 matches this season. Thirty-two members of the NYC squad saw some action on the field in 2014.
• We were handed some incorrect information last week and are happy to confirm that Delayne Ashby is definitely part of our under-20s program again in 2015. Still only 19, Delayne played in 21 matches in his first season with North Queensland.
• Gavin Cooper is the latest Cowboy to showcase his trickshot talents in front of the WIN Locker Room cameras. His effort will be on WIN News on Wednesday night around 7.15pm.
• Missing the top four led to a lengthening of the Cowboys premiership odds with bookmakers bet365.com. After coming in to $5.50 after beating Manly, we’re now rated as a $7 chance. The Roosters are favourites at $3.
• The post-match award winners from the Manly games at the weekend were: NRL player of the match – Robert Lui; NRL play of the day – Kyle Feldt for his leaping try; NYC player of the match – Jordan Kenworthy; and NYC play of the day – David Munro for his try.
• This week’s birthday boys are NYC hooker Josh Chudleigh who celebrated his 20th birthday on Monday and winger Kurt Perry who turns 19 on Thursday.
• Paul Green will be the first guest on the Sports Today program on 4BC in Brisbane tonight. He’ll be on air at 6.05pm.
