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Live 2015 NRL grand final: Brisbane Broncos v North Queensland Cowboys

Updated October 5, 2015 — 2:04am,first published October 2, 2015 — 11:33am

2.04am on Oct 5, 2015

I want to keep going but the technology wants me to go home. Nothing is working.

Thanks for joining me all year and thanks to Fairfax for giving me the opportunity to break new ground in rugby league journalism - or at least try, sometimes the ground caved in on me - this year.

Last night was my most intense and enjoyable experience covering a grand final, at least since 1989 when I was fresh out of school and covering the greatest grand final of all time.

At 46, I'm fresh out of a carefully maintained extended adolescence and that grand final has been eclipsed by an even better spectacle. There's a nice synergy to it as I might cover the next 30 grand finals this way - from a computer far away from the ground, immersed in the event without the distractions of catering, parking and shoddy media access.

To describe those last few moments live, direct to the reader, rather than to a copytaker or computer, was incredibly satisfying and enervating.

You might say that it's the same as being a radio or TV commentator but that's not my primary vocation. It's writing - and technology has given me a new medium in which to do that, one which I am not sure we fully appreciate yet.

I hope you found the blog thorough, if nothing else. I thought there would be more dressingroom stuff to include but everyone is sitting on that material for tomorrow - when more people are online to read it.

Isn't it funny? We went from saving everything for the paper, to putting it all online and disregarding the paper, to sitting on everything again!

I'm off. Here's Rugby League Internet Radio as usual. Listen to it all off-season. Adios

1.31am on Oct 5, 2015

Paul Green has done an in-house interview with the Club's website.

1.12am on Oct 5, 2015

One for Muzz. They got there, mate

View post on X

1.08am on Oct 5, 2015

And now the team song.

12.56am on Oct 5, 2015

Scott: No More Excuses

Co-captain Matt Scott has given a stirring account of what drove North Queensland to tie the grand final right on the stroke of fulltime and send it into golden point.

"In the past we've been guilty of throwing in the towel, making excuses'," the prop told the club's website.

"Tonight we just looked each other in the eye and said it wasn't going to happen again."Twenty years, this club's been working towards this goal."

12.03am on Oct 5, 2015

Scott Tells Thurston Before Sideline Conversion: "No Pressure..."

Before he took the sideline conversion attempt on which a premiership hinged, Johnathan Thurston got a word of reassurance from his co-captain.

"Before he took the kick, I said 'no pressure'," Matt Scott told Triple M after the North Queensland Cowboys' maiden premiership victory.

"I knew the longer this game went on, the better we were getting. I knew if we could just have more time we could come over the top and we did that."

It was an amazing assertion as an international television audience in the millions held its breath. But it was also prescient - the kick hit the posts but the Cowboys still won in golden point time via a Thurston drop goal.

Assistant coach David Furner said: "It was meant to be. I would have backed him to kick the goal."

Second rower Gavin Cooper agreed, saying: "I thought that kick was going to go over. I was ready to cartwheel into the crowd.

"A few people wrote us off when (Michael Morgan) went down over in New Zealand. He fought his way back. He's a special kid.

"It's going to be the best week of my life - except my family being born and getting married."

Scott also paid tribute to Morgan, who brilliantly set up the last-minute Kyle Feldt try.

"To come up with that play at the end is probably a testament to the kind of player he is going to be," prop Scott said.

"In the past, we'd have thrown the towel in. We just hung in there, stuck to our principles. We were lucky we had Morgo and John in there who could finish it off."

Morgan found it hard to express his emotions. "I was lucky it came off," he said. "It's the greatest feeling I've ever had in my life. It means so much to myself, the team and the region."

11.30pm on Oct 4, 2015

Also, video time!

11.07pm on Oct 4, 2015

Gallery time, people!

10.49pm on Oct 4, 2015

What Thurston Said To Hunt

Clive Churchill Medallist Jonathan Thurston has revealed what he said to downcast Ben Hunt after the losing halfback's calamitous golden time error in the grand final.

Thurston took time out from celebrating to console Hunt, who dropped the ball from the kick-off in golden point time.

"I told him to hold his head up high," Thurston said at the post-match media conference.

"He's had an outstanding couple of years. He'll be a great player for years to come. He spent a week in Queensland camp and we saw what he was made of and I know he'll come back better than ever.

"I wanted to make sure he didn't feel the weight of the world on his shoulders after that error."

Discussing his own lost ball which led to a Brisbane try, Thurston said: "The boys rallied around me. It was a tough error to make. The boys snapped me out of it pretty quickly. Was it stripped? They didn't see it that way."

Coach Paul Green said: the win was "probably fitting given how we've played for most of the year

"I said to them 'try to keep the ball in play' because I felt we'd get some opportunities'. If a team starts kicking for touch, you think 'we've got them' but you've also got the scoreboard pressure."

Thurston said of his missed sideline conversion after the end of regulation time: "I was striking them well yesterday so I was confident of getting it. I was a bit shattered there when I didn't get it, as you could probably see on my face."

His recollection of the match-tying try was: "We were never out of the game. Morgo - what a freak. I threw him the ball and said go for it."

Thurston said his winning field goal was "wobbly off the boot" and that when it went through "it was mayhem after that."

For the full Cowboys presser, click HERE and not on the screen capture below.