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Not only did they concede five tries to last year\u2019s wooden spooners, but they were only able to score three of their own and were completely outplayed by their opponents.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019ll be happy with their effort in defence structurally and they did get caught out (but) I thought their attack was really poor at times,\u201d Tallis said on NRL 360.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looked really clunky. Even when they were going wide, they just weren\u2019t on the right routes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like they\u2019ve worked really hard on their defence and I thought they were better defensively. They didn\u2019t play square, they went sideways. They didn\u2019t earn the right to go sideways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tallis slams Cowboys attack | 02:50<\/p>\n
Respected news journalist Michael Carayannis agreed with the comments made by the former 17-time Queensland Maroons forward.<\/p>\n
He also stated that the club\u2019s high-profile representative stars such as five-eighth Tom Dearden and fullback Scott Drinkwater, were nowhere to be seen throughout the contest.<\/p>\n
Dearden finished the contest with only one try assist and 69 running metres to his name, while Drinkwater made 52 running metres.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought they were poor coming into a season knowing that their coach is under significant pressure and they put out that in the opening game and I think it was their big guns that let them down,\u201d Carayannis added.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrinkwater, Dearden, Reuben Cotter, barely sighted. The best match-up was Jaxon Purdue up against Dane Gagai – I thought that was outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burns binned after monster hit on Ponga! | 00:44<\/p>\n
Braith Anasta continued the conversation and stated that the Cowboys may need to shake-up their halves situation in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still inconsistency there around Jake Clifford, too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came up with a nice little kick and a good play but he had a few errors in him and then took the wrong option at the wrong time, a couple of times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carayannis said, \u201cIf you look at the start of the game and their start to the second-half, they just missed the jump on both occasions. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey did well to peg it back in that first-half but that starts the game and the start to the second half, when they had some momentum going into the halftime break, I thought was really, really poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lack of X-Factor exposed for Dragons | 00:56<\/p>\n
While the likes of Griffin Neame, Murray Taulagi and Jason Taumalolo looked strong at times during the contest, the team as a whole failed to fire.<\/p>\n
Now, they will turn their attention to Round 2 as head coach Todd Payten attempts to retain his job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really worried if I\u2019m a Cowboys fan. As Mick said, your coach is under pressure. You need to win football games and you turn up and play like that,\u201d Brent Read added into the discussion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he was worried before this year to be honest, but unfortunately for him, he\u2019s got a big job ahead of him,\u201d Anasta said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gorden Tallis has let loose, slamming the attack of the North Queensland Cowboys after they were upset by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-513687","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\/513687","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=513687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}