The Cowboys had a point to prove in Sydney’s west when they rocked up at CommBank on Friday night. Still smarting from their 66-18 loss to a remarkable Wests Tigers outfit, including a newly transferred Joe Ofahengaue who was now playing the visitors for the second time in a fortnight, they managed to keep the score levelled at 6-6 heading into the sheds, and glimpsed a superb comeback with a Kyle Feldt double in the back quarter, both off Scott Drinkwater assists, but couldn’t rival the vision and precision of Mitchell Moses’ final charge.

Coen Hess took the first carry of the night, and the Cows set their sights on the right edge, where Heilum Luki made fifteen on the fly, forcing Parra to bring in some heavy defence to ensure that the visitors only made it to their forty for the kick. North Queensland didn’t look likely to do much better on the second carry, so it was a boon when Josh Hodgson swung out an arm to concede the first penalty of the match. Reece Robson made good metres from dummy half on tackle three, but Matt Doorey was there to prevent any permanent damage.

Chad Townsend finished with an end-over-ender to the left corner, where Sean Russell collected it amidst a sea of Cowboys jerseys, and with Bryce Cartwright following with the first offload of the night, and Robson infringing the ruck four plays later, the Eels had the first real flow of the game. Wiremu Greig was inside the ten by play three, but the Cows shifted the rhythm by deflecting the kick down their right edge, where Kyle Feldt and Bailey Simonsson competed for it, with the North Queensland winger finally getting the upper hand.

Doorey now came up with his second terrific tackle of the evening, slamming in hard to prevent Jake Granville making too many metres off a Jordan McLean pass, while Russell followed with a hard square run into the Cowboys line midway through the following set – a statement of purpose that galvanised J’maine Hopgood into setting up a right sweep on the penultimate play. It didn’t bring dividends then and there, but continued to escalate the momentum for Parra, as Dylan Brown delivered a superb chase on the back of a Moses kick.

The Eels received the chance they needed with a Peta Hiku drop early in the next set, but the Cows responded with a successful challenge to show (supposedly) that Hodgson had played a role. Granville ploughed into the line, as if keen to make up for Doorey’s shutdown, Hess explored the right edge, McLean made ten after contact to bring them deep into the twenty, and everything came together a play later. Robson laid the platform with a wide ball from dummy half for Townsend, who responded with a short pass for a raring Luki on his outside.

The young second-rower now delivered a superb sequel to his right side raid during the opening set, offloading through a solid legs tackle from Dylan Brown. Scott Drinkwater was the recipient, and continued the twisting motion of Luki’s play, rotating through a last-ditch Doorey hit to reach out his left arm and plant the Steeden down. It was a resounding riposte to Parra’s recent burst of position, and to Brown and Doorey’s impressive early form, garnering the Cowboys six on the board once Townsend swung his first two through the posts.

North Queensland achieved impressive metres after points, and defended equally well on the following set, keeping Parra in their twenty until tackle four, and forcing Moses to boot it just outside his thirty. Meanwhile, Joffa was off the park early with a calf injury, bringing Makahesi Makatoa off the bench earlier than expected. Maika Sivo steadied the ship with a calm take beneath Townsend’s next bomb, and Greig did the same with a tough run up the middle on play four – and they needed it, since Parra got unlucky under Brown’s next bomb to the left.

To take it, Feldt had to contort himself along the sideline, reaching out his boot within millimetres of the chalk, but the Cows survived, and got more position with a second effort from Sivo too. While Parra got the ball back, they were struggling to make position, and looking tired already, with Carty clutching his knee in backplay, and Hodgson attempting to reset the rhythm with fifteen metres out of dummy half. Brown followed with some Benji-like footwork, paving the way for Gutho to break into space and set up Moses for a clutch kick.

Even if Mitch didn’t quite nail the trajectory, the acceleration of this sequence seemed to wake Parra up again, and they scored on their very next set. A Jack Gosiewski offside propelled them up the park, where Greig drove them into the twenty, Makatoa broke the ten, and Brown popped it across for Greig to bookend it all. The Cowboys seemed to fall like dominos before him – Gosiewski was already sliding out to the right, Granville was skittered by the big prop’s bulk at close range and, holding on tight, McLean still couldn’t keep him from the chalk.

This try was all strength and force, exactly what Parramatta needed to counter the dexterity with which Drinkwater had gone over a few minutes before. Moses added the extras, and the score was locked as the second quarter arrived, and the Cows started to struggle with spending time in opposition territory. Nevertheless, Hess supercharged the next set with a late offload back to Robson, and Drinkwater capitalised with a chip that Doorey was forced to get a metre behind the chalk. After a few minutes of trading sets, the visitors had a dropout.

Gutho went high with the kick, and managed to just clear the ten, but Feldt was waiting to take it, starting an immediate shift to the other side of the park, where Gosiewski took a crack at the line, before the Cowboys swung it back to the right, in their most positionally dynamic set so far. They sent it right once more, as Townsend opted to run the footy, but with Drinkwater putting it down while he was attempting to catch-and-pass to the wing, the Eels had a chance to absorb the residual energy of this sudden surge for the CommBank faithful.

Hopgood drove the ball deep into the line late in the set, but became the first big casualty of the dewy surface, popping out a loose pass that Ofahiki Ogden was never going to take clean. Townsend responded with a soaring bomb, and while Sivo did well to leap up and collect it with Cowboys on all side, he was unable to make a single metre off it either. Gutho reset the position with a fifteen metre run on the penultimate tackle, and Moses sealed the deal with an enormous bomb that Carty and Penisini chased down to keep the Cows stuck in their ten.

Townsend got a nice weight on the next kick, sitting it right on the sideline as Gutho circled, expecting it to go dead at any minute. Yet as much as North Queensland got a breather to consolidate their defensive line, the blue and gold burned with a newfound sense of speed and energy here, culminating with a Gutherson cut-out providing Sivo with his first real glimpse of a break up the left. Somehow, Hiku reclaimed the Steeden from a chaotic contest on the same edge, but the Eels felt like they only needed one more chance to score a second.

Brown got the next best thing at the end of the following set, when North Queensland momentarily matched the home team’s acceleration with a superb run up the right from Drinkwater, who flicked the footy back in for Hiku to break the line and send it further in to Townsend, who would have scored if not for a heroic legs tackle from the Parramatta five-eighth. It must have been a balm for Brown, who’d been trampled by Drinkwater at the seventh minute, and made for an even more buoyant Eels when they got the ball back again.

In fact, they delivered a superb right sequence of their own, with Penisini bumping off Zac Laybutt and flicking it out for Carty to bust through the line. True to the volatile spirit of this match, however, Laybutt managed to bring Cartwright down at the end of it all, while Parra bounced back two sets later, when Simonsson ducked away from a North Queensland pack to make fifteen extra metres up the middle, and Moses, who had been scrutinising the park in back play, delayed the right edge pass to guarantee almost as much position for Penisini.

The Eels got their first dropout of the night out of it, and while Ogden started with a monster run on play one, Gosiewski’s defence forced the mistake. Just like that, the Cows had a midfield scrum, with Luki doing well to hold on to a hard pass in the face of Doorey, and Hiku ensuring that Simonsson couldn’t break away from the first line of defence again early in the next count. Carty came up with a beautiful round-the-back offload to Gutho at the end, off some silky footwork from Moses, but the King just couldn’t replicate it into third phase play.

Instead, Griffin Neame got hands to it, leaving Parramatta with one more set to make an impact before the break. Thirty seconds out from the siren, Sivo finally got his break down the left, only to be tumbled into touch by a committed Townsend tackle, with Drinkwater coming in on top to finish the job. The Cowboys had been down 24-6 at the break last week but they had a crack at coming away with their first away win of the season here. Parra had the first set back, and were at halfway by tackle four thanks to a gutsy run from the captain.

Hiku looked for an offload early in the first count for the visitors, but couldn’t find it, while Russell continued to take on the middle like he was the biggest prop on the park. Drinkwater and Dylan Brown came together in the air beneath Moses’ next kick, nearly knocking heads as the Parra half made the first error to get North Queensland off the hook. Feldt got up gingerly after 13 and 14 converged on him early in the next set, and things devolved further when Drinkwater tried to make space beyond the forty, but ended up dropping it on the turf.

Brown came up with it, a great follow-up to the most accomplished tackle of the night. On the play before Drinkwater coughed it up, Dylan had come in hard and low enough on Luki to lift him clean off the ground, but precisely and dexterously enough to ensure he didn’t land at a dangerous angle either. It was if Brown had simply placed Luki on the grass, in a vision of total control that the Eels at large parlayed into the sustained stint on the North Queensland line that ensued from a pair of Laybutt errors. The blue and gold pressure was fully on now.

They shifted it left straight away out of the scrum, and this time Brown couldn’t do much with Townsend up in his face. Odgen steadied the attack, Brendan Hands tried to bust through beside the left posts, Makatoa tried to offload beside the right, and Brown shifted it out for Sivo to meet a wall of North Queensland jerseys on the left wing. Finally, Brown cemented his ownership of the last few minutes with a crossfield chip, and while Hands got it out to Penisini, the young centre lobbed it forward, disallowing Russell’s triumphant putdown in the corner.

The Eels got the ball back immediately, and spread it right immediately, where Russell crossed again – and once again was denied, as a desperation tackle from Ben Hampton induced the knock-on with a blade of grass in it. It was a stunning answer to Brown’s shot on Luki, and capped off a period of heroic Cowboys defence, which the Eels were clearly determined to match from the Hopgood-led three-man pack that drove Feldt seven metres back on the very next tackle. Robson made twenty, Luke made fifteen, and the visitors were back in business.

In fact, this was their best set since the break, right down to the Townsend kick that forced Gutho to bring it to ground in his ten as Cowboy after Cowboy piled on. Even so, Ogden almost broke through the line on the fifth tackle of the subsequent set, in a hint of Eels greatness to come, before Moses went for a more modest option by booting it over the sideline to gift his men a brief breather. The last ten minutes had been the most sustained set-for-set period of the game, the score locked the whole time, as both sides searched for that big individual play.

Brown tried to provide it four tackles into the next set, dummying and searching for space up the left, as did Moses, who chipped for Gutho, only to see Drinkwater get to it, and watch, hands on hips, as the Cows sent up a successful challenge to prove that a supposed Robson strip on Gutherson had actually been a loose carry for the captain. Between the deflation of this last sequence, and Russell’s two disappointments on the wing, the stage was set for North Queensland to take the lead, and so McLean headed straight down the middle on tackle four.

Still, a penalty can make or break this kind of tightly fought game, so it was no small thing when Russell tempted a flop from Jamayne Taunoa-Brown at the start of the next count. Doorey delivered his hardest run of the night to break the third on tackle three, and while Hopgood couldn’t showcase his dynamic offloading game a beat later, Brown reprised his early crossfield chip to the right. However, it didn’t bring the points, as Carty got hands to it, but let Laybutt have the last word, and McLean gave more grunt up the middle in response.

The set-for-set rhythm had only intensified over the last five minutes, with both teams agonisingly close now to the break or big showy play that had to end this sustained deadlock. No surprise that it came from Brown, who put in a goose step to reset the left edge attack, opening up just enough space for Gutho to drift across and loft the cut-out ball for Simonsson to catch-and-pass so delicately that Sivo was able to trot across untouched, rocketing him well ahead of Graham, Isaako and Khan-Pereira (12) for most tries of the 2023 season at 23.

Even better, the grounding put Sivo equal with Semi Radradra at 82 tries, making him equal fifth all-time for Parramatta. He wasn’t doing too badly against the Cowboys either, with six tries in four games, including the match-winner in last year’s preliminary final. Moses was 7/11 from the left sideline when he set up the tee, and made it 8/12 with a confident boot straight through the posts, putting the Eels double the Cows on the brink of the last quarter. Since the break, the Eels had 24-5 tackles in the opposition half, so they needed these points.

The last quarter of football had been pretty austere, but things would accelerate again in the final twenty. Feldt saved Moses’ next kick right on the sideline, getting himself some closure after his choke on the chalk against the Tigers last week, although the Cows were met with a blue and gold wall when they started their next foray up the park. Conversely, Parra glimpsed their next great burst of position when they got ball in hand again, winning a restart off a McLean ruck mistake, and then another break from Greig, who came down centimetres out.

Again, Brown was the playmaker, popping out the offload, and for a moment it felt like this near-try might be as deflating as Russell’s two cracks on the left, even if they did manage to keep North Queensland in their own forty on the subsequent set. But fifteen post-contacts from Simonsson, to bring them over halfway on tackle two, and further running metres from Greig a play later, were more than enough to revive their momentum, as Sivo attempted a break up the left, and Moses deftly parlayed all this escalating energy back to the other wing.

If Greig’s disappointment had evoked Russell’s double frustration, then that just made it all the more cathartic when the gun no. 5 crashed over right where he’d been twice denied. Moses set it up, bringing the footy deep into the line, and so clearing up space for Gutho to catch-and-pass out to Penisini for the assist, with Laybutt and Derby scrambling to keep up with the Eels at their first-grade best. Moses booted another sideline conversion straight through the posts, bringing Parramatta to triple the Cows at 18-6, with fifteen minutes to go.

Again, Hopgood couldn’t find the offload early in the restart, although Mitch was still in enemy territory by the time he put boot to ball. North Queensland were looking really fatigued now, so they needed to make a conscious effort to wake themselves up – and delivered with two clutchy offloads, the first from Leilua on one knee out to Laybutt, and the second from Hiku to Robson after a skittering, searching run in the opposition thirty. Add spurious pressure from Luca Moretti, and this was the Cows’ strongest chance in some time.

Parra sent up a challenge but with no joy, and while the call was inconclusive, it was small solace when North Queensland delivered on their first full stint in the twenty since the sheds. All it took was a harbour bridge ball from Drinkwater for Feldt to show Russell that he could find room just as expansively on the right edge, dodging away from Sivo, who seemed to be momentarily considering reining in the intercept, and then smashing over to narrow the margin to eight with Townsend missing the kick from a tricky angle six metres in from touch.

In crossing over, Feldt came a little bit closer to Matty Bowen’s record for tries scored at North Queensland (130) at 123, light years ahead now of Ty Williams (85), Ashley Graham (84) and Johnathan Thurston (80), while his team looked like they were fresh off the bench on the restart, galvanised by scoring against the run of Parramatta dominance. The Eels were already working it out of their own ten when Simonsson lobbed the first pass backwards, dooming his men to spend the first three tackles in their red zone, and Moses to kick barely across it.

Over the space of a few minutes, the rhythm had swung back in North Queensland’s direction, and with only eight left on the clock, they might have enough petrol in the tank to score the necessary nine points despite their exhaustion. Leaping a metre off the park, Sivo provided his men with a critical rallying point by taking a slightly deep Townsend kick on the full, and yet the Eels were still struggling to break their twenty, only clearing the red now with a Makahesi Makatoa charge on tackle four, before Moses booted his next one near the thirty.

The adrenalin surging over the park was truly volatile now, tempting Feldt into a very loose offload that Neame did well to scoop up. Hiku couldn’t make metres on the following play, but Hess and Robson supercharged the set with second and third phase respectively, while Feldt’s chip-and-chase brought all this intensifying chaos to a head, as players from both sides surged in to secure the roiling Steeden, with North Queensland coming away with the advantage and getting a pair of Simonsson errors to ensure them another set on Parra’s line.

This was their best position since Feldt had scored, and the cult winger now smashed over for a double off possibly their best sweep of the night. Leilua got them rolling, drifting across to the right edge where he popped it out for Drinkwater to send it on to Kulifeku Finefeuiaki, who turned around to face his own goal line and then handed it straight back to his fullback. From there, Scotty provided his second assist for Feldt, this time with a shorter ball that the big flyer took on the wing but brought back in field for a Townsend two before the crossbar.

Seeing Feldt take the reins always injects a special belief into the North Queensland side, but seeing him deliver a double, both off Drinkwater assists, and after Russell had twice been disappointed in the same spot, could and should have been enough here to bring the Cowboys one more try before the break. Instead, Moses’ genius came to the fore, as the visitors wasted their challenge in an attempt to deny a goal line dropout he set up, before Mitch delivered the last six points of the game to bring his blue and gold to a 24-16 victory.

In the most critical play of the game, Drinkwater went short, and Feldt’s hands gave way to Hands. Moses gave Carty a run on the right, and then shifted it in for Hopgood, before taking the offload, and then arcing it out for Brown, who dropped a fairly gentle grubber on his boot, and got lucky when Hiku knocked on what should have been a pretty easy trap. On the very next play, Moses condensed all that vision into a plosive run off the scrum, putting in an enormous right foot step and sliding through Leilua at the death to bring the scoreline to 22.

This was footy perfection – brilliant timing, superb footwork, courage on the chalk, and brilliant attacking dexterity, with Moses going low with just enough time and space to contend with both Leilua and the wave of North Queensland defenders that tumbled on. It was a poetic end to the match for him to slice through the two for Parramatta’s sixth win of the season, a good preparation for their Battle of the West with the Bulldogs on the King’s Birthday weekend, as their own King prepares to lead his men into the second half of 2023.