Round 22 of the NRL season kicks off on Thursday night with North Queensland hosting the Sydney Roosters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Cowboys will be looking to secure their top eight spot while the Tricolours will be fighting to stay in the hunt for the minor premiership.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Todd Payten’s side pulled off a big upset against the Roosters earlier this year and will be looking to repeat the dose on home soil.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Follow the live blog below, keep up to date with all the latest stats in our ScoreCentre<\/a>, and tune in to our live radio coverage<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:29pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:29pm<\/p>\n UpdateThu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:23pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:23pm<\/p>\n 26′ Walker gets his second<\/p>\n The Roosters are rolling now. A penalty puts them back on the attack and on the last tackle Walker steps off his left foot through some feeble defence to score under the posts.<\/p>\n That’s his second try of the night and once he converts it’s 24-6 Roosters.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:14pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:14pm<\/p>\n 20′ Two in two minutes for Tricolours<\/p>\n Cherry-Evans nails a 40\/20 and the Roosters are on the attack again.<\/p>\n Tedesco probes across the field, he pokes a kick in and Savala is there first to score their third try of the night.<\/p>\n Geez, wasn’t much on there and in the blink of an eye, once Walker converts, it’s 18-6 Roosters.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:11pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:11pm<\/p>\n 15′ Walker goes over for Roosters’ second<\/p>\n Again the Roosters pick the Cowboys apart through the middle, Walker hits inside Tedesco with a nice inside ball and backs up to get the ball back and score.<\/p>\n Crafty stuff from the halfback and once he converts his own try it’s 12-6 Roosters.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:06pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:06pm<\/p>\n 13′ Cowboys reply through Burns<\/p>\n Back to back penalties put the Cowboys on the attack and give them a fresh set in the red zone.<\/p>\n They sweep right, Purdue digs right into the line and tries to fire a pass to Burns, Talau gets a hand to it, it falls for Burns anyway and the winger is over in the corner!<\/p>\n Drinkwater converts from out wide and it’s 6-all. Nice fightback from North Queensland.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:01pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 8:01pm<\/p>\n 8′ Drinkwater spared a howler<\/p>\n After the Cowboys wrap up Wong on the last tackle Laybutt plays the ball and Drinkwater isn’t paying attention!<\/p>\n Wong goes to dive on the ball but he knocks it on! Blushes dodged by the Cowboys, who have gotten off to a very slow start.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:56pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:56pm<\/p>\n 3′ Roosters off to ripper start<\/p>\n Radley pulls through some soft defence in the middle of the field and slips a beautiful offload to Robson to put him away and Tedesco is in support to score.<\/p>\n Outstanding start for the Chooks and once Walker converts it’s 6-0 Roosters.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:53pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:53pm<\/p>\n And away we go<\/p>\n Cowboys kick us off, running right to left.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:50pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:50pm<\/p>\n Kick-off imminent<\/p>\n Reuben Cotter and Connor Watson lead the teams out with the Cowboys wearing an strip commemorating Indigenous round.<\/p>\n We’ll have a smoking ceremony, a welcome to country and then the game will get underway.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:23pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:23pm<\/p>\n Last time they met<\/p>\n It was a good few months ago now but here’s the good oil from the last time these two teams met. One of a number of strong Cowboys this year – most of which have come without Tom Dearden, funnily enough.<\/p>\n Can they give us a sequel tonight? Or will the Chooks win their sixth straight?<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:12pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:12pm<\/p>\n Final teams: Cowboys vs Roosters<\/p>\n No changes for North Queensland – a reminder, they’re still without Tom Dearden, so Jaxon Purdue is at halfback and Zac Laybutt is in at centre.<\/p>\n Just the one switch for the Roosters with Spencer Leniu dropping back to the bench and Salesi Foketi starting at prop. Might be a chance that Foketi is actually on an edge with Nat Butcher pushing to prop, we’ll keep an eye out.<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:11pm<\/p>\n Thu 30 Jul 2026 at 7:11pm<\/p>\n Welcome to the ABC’s NRL live blog<\/p>\n Hey sports fans, time for some footy.<\/p>\n Tonight we’ve got North Queensland vs the Roosters in an interesting clash between a top four certainty and a top eight contender.<\/p>\n Should be plenty of points a bit of fun.<\/p>\n Kick back, relax and let’s have some fun out there tonight.<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Round 22 of the NRL season kicks off on Thursday night with North Queensland hosting the Sydney Roosters.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,163,160,761,762,158,21261,9120,159,161,85],"class_list":["post-833218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cowboys","tag-live-blog","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-nrl-finals","tag-roosters","tag-rugby-league","tag-season","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833218","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=833218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}