The North Queensland Cowboys are an Australian rugby league club from Townsville . The team, founded in 1992, has played in the highest national league, today's National Rugby League , since 1995 . The primary club colors are dark blue and yellow, the secondary gray and white. The Cowboys play their home games in the 26,500-seat Willows Sports Complex .
As part of the expansion of the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) into other Australian states , the Brisbane Broncos, the first team from the rugby league stronghold of Queensland , had already been accepted into the national elite class in 1988. Because of the great popularity of the Broncos , the league decided to settle another team in Australia's northeast with the Cowboys from 1995 . But it was precisely the great popularity of the capital city team that made it difficult for the club from the much smaller Townsville to build up its own fan base. The lack of audience participation and failure reinforced each other in the first few years, the cowboys got stuck in the table basement and "won" the wooden spoon in 1995 and 2000 . It was only in 2004, after almost a decade, that the qualification for the play-offs succeeded for the first time as seventh in the table . After the signing of the new superstar Johnathan Thurston , the sensational jump into the NRL Grand Final took place a year later , which was lost to the Wests Tigers at 16:30 . After an interim low in 2008-2010, the Cowboys have been represented in all play-offs since 2011 . In 2014 they won the NRL Auckland Nines tournament and thus the first title in the club's history. In 2015, in their strongest season to date , the Cowboys defeated arch rivals Brisbane Broncos in a highly dramatic Grand Final with 17:16 in extra time and thus crowned themselves champions of the National Rugby League for the first time . In 2017, North Queensland caused a sensation again when it was only able to qualify for the play-offs on the last day of the game, but then made it to the Grand Final again despite the injury-related failures of superstar Thurston and co-captain Matt Scott . There the Cowboys had no chance against the Melbourne Storm and lost 6:34.
Ty Williams
Antonio Winterstein
Ray Thompson
Jason Taumalolo
