{"id":40787,"date":"2025-08-03T17:18:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T17:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/40787\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T17:18:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T17:18:14","slug":"cowboys-eliminated-from-nrl-finals-race-with-five-rounds-still-to-be-played","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/40787\/","title":{"rendered":"Cowboys eliminated from NRL finals race with five rounds still to be played"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>North Queensland coach <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nrl.com\/watch\/matches\/telstra-premiership\/2025\/round-22\/cowboys-round-22\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Todd Payten<\/a>\u00a0has cut a deeply frustrated figure after the Cowboys bowed out of NRL finals contention with a poor 32-12 away loss to the Sharks.<\/p>\n<p>With five rounds\u2014and just four games\u2014remaining in the Cowboys\u2019 season, Payten\u2019s already fading chances of remaining in charge beyond 2025 took a potentially fatal hit in a diabolical opening 40 minutes that saw the Sharks race to a 26-0 half time lead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThirty-five percent possession in the first half, taking ourselves out of the contest with yardage penalties or errors,\u201d Payten offered when asked to explain the Townsville-based club\u2019s latest disastrous showing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou give that type of possession away and you\u2019ll be on the back foot, it\u2019s been a similar story most of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/rugby-league\/news\/adam-doueihi-wests-tigers-nrl-upset-galvin-bulldogs\/a749007788e1be85cae21ee8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Doueihi masterclass rains on Galvin parade in epic Wests Tigers upset<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere haven\u2019t been a lot of times this year where we\u2019ve been outplayed,\u201d Payten continued, as echoes of the celebrating Sharks players reverberated painfully through the walls at Sharks Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve beaten ourselves, we\u2019ve shot ourselves in the foot too often\u2014and that\u2019s highly frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asked what he expected from his under-performing squad in the final rounds of the NRL season, a downbeat Payten suggested it was all about keeping things simple.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to see us play the game the right way, get through our sets, be disciplined and make the opposition earn it\u2014we have not done that well enough, at all, for most of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following the Round 22 loss the Cowboys have slumped to 13th on the NRL ladder, just three points ahead of the last-placed Rabbitohs and Titans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Queensland coach Todd Payten\u00a0has cut a deeply frustrated figure after the Cowboys bowed out of NRL finals&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-40787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}