North Queensland and Cronulla have a rich of history of facing each other in finals and Cowboys centre Valentine Holmes expecting another intriguing chapter to play out on Friday night.
While the Sharks have a dominant head-to-head against the Cowboys, winning 11 of their past 13 encounters; come finals time, the Cowboys buck the trend and have won three of their last four finals matches.
Holmes, who played 105 games as a former Shark, said despite the recent record, there was work to do for the Cowboys before meeting their Finals Week 2 opponents at Allianz Stadium.
“We always seem to we play Sharks; the Cowboys and Sharks always seem to play each other, we meet each other in the finals and it’s usually a big game," Holmes said following his side's finals win against the Knights.
“This one is an elimination one as well and they'll be up for it.
“They had a hard game against Storm in Melbourne, so they'll be up for it again.
"It's a short turnaround for both of us; we have a few little niggles; so hopefully the boys can get on top of their little sorenesses and we go down ready to go and put on good performance.”
The last time the two sides met in the finals in 2022, it was the boot of Holmes that made the difference, kicking a two-point field goal in extra time to progress into the next week of finals, before bowing out in another close one in their preliminary final against the Eels.
This week's game against Cronulla also holds extra meaning for Holmes, as with each passing match, it could be his last time playing in Cowboys colours after signing on with the Dragons for next season.
The State of Origin representative however was still firmly focused on the now and said his side were also looking to make amends following their exit in the preliminary finals stage when they last made the playoffs.
“I'm pretty good with just focusing on where my feet are at, I'm not the type of person to look too much into the future because you never really know what's going to happen tomorrow,” Holmes told NRL.com about his mindset going into Friday’s final.
“I'm just very grateful I still get to play and we're playing finals footy.
“There's a few boys in our team where it's our last season here at the club, so we all want to finish on a high.
“It's not something we kind of talk about, but, we all individually know it, we want to go further than we did in 2022 and we certainly have the team to do it.
“(The loss to the Eels) is still in the back of the mind, it certainly is in mine.
“We were pretty close; we were like five minutes away from playing in the big dance.
Match Highlights: Cowboys v Eels
“I'm sure if you asked a few of the lads that played in that game, it would burn but, you move on from that, you learn from it and we've got a lot of guys that have played in those big experience games, so that helps as well.
“I don't know what it is, but I think we're a perfect group with experience … the young exciting backs and then we’ve got some young exciting middles coming through, with Griff [Griffin Neame], our back rowers Heilum [Luki] and Miah [Jeremiah Nanai], they’re just hard to handle.
“We're all playing to our strengths which is good; we don't have one edge that we always go to, we have two strike edges, so it's hard to defend.
“This is what you play for, you play for these games, so we'll get our head right, get our bodies right and play for another 80 against the Sharks.”
Match: Sharks v Cowboys
Finals Week 2 -
home Team
Sharks
4th Position
away Team
Cowboys
5th Position
Venue: Allianz Stadium, Sydney
Match broadcasters:
- WatchNRL
