Cowboys Crowned Challenge Champions At Leeds

The Cowboys went on to defeat the Leeds in a 34-4 victory after completely dominating the opposition in the second half.

The Rhinos, chasing a record fourth World Club Challenge victory, went into the contest as huge underdogs, given their winless start to the Super League season and their lengthy list of injured first-team players.

North Queensland Cowboys lift the World Club Series trophy.

Injury-hit Leeds looked like restoring some English pride with a tremendous first half of real guts.

With a strong wind at their backs they kept the Cowboys to 4-all at half-time but a mistake from Ash Handley in trying to take a Johnathan Thurston bomb at the end of the first set handed the NRL champions an easy four-pointer to Kane Linnett and from that point they were never headed.

With an all-Australian front row of James Tamou and Matt Scott, representative veteran Ben Hannant on the bench and the ultra-reliable second-row partnership of Gavin Cooper and Ethan Lowe joining Taumalolo in the pack, there will be no shortage of big bodies making metres.

Thurston’s successful conversion made it 10-4 and it became a forlorn task for Leeds when right winger Kyle Feldt took Morgan’s cut-out pass and fended off Ryan Hall surprisingly easily to cross for a third try after 48 minutes.

“They’ve been at the top of the table for a number of years and we knew they were going to come at us hard which they did and we ended up controlling the ball in the second half and got some points”.

Leeds Rhinos’ Mitch Garbutt (left) is sent off after punchin North Queensland Cowboys James Tamou.

The result was beyond doubt just after the hour when Lachlan Coote pounced to touch down Thurston’s deflected grubber-kick.

“Without some heroic defence, they could have been a try or two up”.

Leeds’ earlier tremendous efforts then began to take their toll as centre Justin O’Neill strolled past some exhausted tackling to score two tries in the last 12 minutes and Thurston took his goal tally to five from seven attempts.