The Cowboys\u2019 kick diffusal was awful against the Sharks, which invited the home side to enjoy many more attacking opportunities in the 26-16 win.<\/p>\n
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In his final game for the club, Drinkwater struggled under the high ball. He made four errors in a night to forget. <\/p>\n
Payten believes the Cowboys were their own worse enemy against the Sharks. <\/p>\n
\u201cCostly night (for the back three), yep,\u201d Payten said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were outplayed but we certainly hurt ourselves. In big games you need to defuse kicks and be clean out of your own end but we didn\u2019t do those two things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cowboys skipper Tom Dearden struck a forlorn figure next to Payten post-match when he outlined what his side did wrong. <\/p>\n
2025\u2019s Wally Lewis Medal winner says the mixed bag the Cowboys served up on Saturday night was indicative of their campaign this season.<\/p>\n
Sharks send Cowboys home in week 1 | 03:14<\/p>\n
\u201dWe made a lot of errors and put ourselves under pressure,\u201d Dearden said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we were we\u2019re feeling quite confident defensively. I thought we were turning them away and we were gritty when we had to defend our line, but when we felt like we just got over the line, we then made another error or gave away another penalty away that would put us back under pressure. I think that\u2019s the most disappointing one. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like we sort of beat ourselves but it\u2019s also been kind of the story of our year a bit too. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been up and down, and I think when you\u2019re like that, it\u2019s hard to just flip a switch when you get to the big games during finals time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cowboys endured their trials and tribulations this season, but it\u2019s hard to imagine the club\u2019s doesn\u2019t consider 2026 an underwhelming campaign.<\/p>\n
Payten was clearly disappointed when giving a snap post-mortem wanted to acknowledge the \u201cchallenges\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Todd Payten says his back three had a \u201ccostly night\u201d as the Cowboys\u2019 season ended with a disappointing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-889437","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\/889437","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=889437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}