THEY’LL be hanging from the rafters on Friday night when Johnathan Thurston plays his final game in Townsville. There has never been a more beloved Cowboy.

Except, of course, for his partner in crime, the other half of the old firm, Matt Bowen.

When they talk about the great combinations — Lyons and Menzies, Gidley and Tahu, Johns and Johns, Kenny and Sterling, Leilua and Rapana — just know Bowen and Thurston are right up there with any of them.

When Thurston arrived in 2005, Bowen was already a star. He’d made his debut four years before and the skinny kid from Hope Vale had become the first out and out North Queensland hero.

PART ONE: JT, legacy and the Broncos

PART TWO: The heirs that aren’t there

media_camera Matt Bowen and Johnathan Thurston forged a fearsome partnership.

The pre-Thurston days for North Queensland were a struggle to say the least. They couldn’t attract stars, they couldn’t develop juniors, they couldn’t win games, they couldn’t do anything. Existing and losing was just about all they did do.

It took years for them to show a bit of life, and Bowen was it. Even in the doldrums years after their admission in 1995, the fans always showed up. When they were given a player like Bowen, quick as lighting and even harder to catch, it was a seminal moment for the club.

They were relegated to the old 9.30 game of a Saturday night, delayed telecast, the very end of the NRL universe. They went a decade without a free to air game. That began to change, in part, because Bowen made it so.

Bowen was the best player on the first Cowboys team to make the finals in 2004, he set up the only try they scored in their first win over Brisbane.

He was the first star, the first real star, the Cowboys ever had. Bowen was North Queensland’s and he’d never be anyone else’s.

In 2005, when Thurston joined the club from the Bulldogs, he and Bowen hit it off straight away.

media_camera Johnathan Thurston and Matt Bowen combined instantly for the Cowboys.

It’s easy now, with a swag of Dally Ms and a premiership trophy, to think of North Queensland’s last 14 seasons as the Thurston story, but from 2005 until 2013 it was just as much the Bowen story.

In a rugby league world ruled by regimentation, discipline and repetition, Bowen and Thurston were like nothing else. They did whatever they wanted to do whenever they wanted to do it. Even Melbourne’s combination, as big as the three of them were, couldn’t be like Bowen and Thurston.

Smith, Slater and Cronk were brilliant, no question. But they were clinical, ruthless, bred to seek out weaknesses and exploit them with play that conceived, planned and executed to perfection.

Most of the time they were marvels of construction and design.

Bowen and Thurston were just marvellous. They had plans, but those plans didn’t have rules, they were more like guidelines. Too much structure would have been like a cage. For Bowen and Thurston footy was played in front of them, not beforehand.

media_camera Johnathan Thurston celebrates as Matt Bowen runs in to score a try for the Cowboys.

It used to be said Bowen and Thurston didn’t even need words some of the time. All it took was a shout, a whistle, a little tap on the head, and one could find the other.

Things like that aren’t supposed to happen in professional sport, that’s backyard stuff. But Bowen says it’s true.

“We could just give a wink and a nod and do all our different stuff. He knew what I wanted and I knew what he wanted. It worked well. It came off in games,” Bowen told The Daily Telegraph.

“He knew what I wanted and vice versa. It worked well.”

That’s putting it mildly. The duo drove the Cowboys to the grand final in their first season together in 2005.

media_camera Johnathan Thurston and Matt Bowen could communicate without words.

Thurston won the Dally M and made his debut for Queensland in a State of Origin thriller when Bowen scored the winning try in golden point.

Bowen scored the first try in each of their last three finals games, including the grand final. All three came off Thurston passes.

It proved that finals run the season before wasn’t a fluke. This was a real footy team now.

They never returned to the grand final together, but apart from injury their form never waned. In 2007, perhaps their finest conjoined year, they polled a combined 66 Dally M points, with Thurston winning the medal and Bowen finishing fourth. North Queensland went to the preliminary final, where they were beaten by Manly.

Bowen says the combination, which looked so effortless and organic on the field, began at training.

“It took a while,” he said.

“It starts at training, we would do a lot of stuff in fitness games, doing drills and different stuff. It became second nature when we got on the field.

“We were both competitive and always wanted to win.

“We clicked together with little things that we did and when it came off on the field, that was the stuff we did on the training paddock.

“It sort of came as second nature.

“In saying that we always had our structured plays, but off the cuff stuff that we did that sort of looked natural and normal, it was top of the head stuff and it paid off.”

media_camera Johnathan Thurston and Matt Bowen celebrate a Cowboys win.

When they first started, the wrap on Bowen and Thurston was to never buy the dummies, which is easy to say be extremely hard to do.

Bowen’s show and go was as deadly as the game has ever seen, and once he saw space it was already over. He turned himself into a playmaker as his career continued, improving as a passer and kicker as the role of the fullback changed.

But he was always a runner first and foremost and never did he look more dangerous than when he knifed up the middle of the ruck from a Thurston pass, or flying from the clouds to take a Thurston kick.

Bowen was a great player in his own right. He would have been a star if he’d never met Johnathan Thurston. But rarely have two players been more made for one another.

They’re still mates away from football, and Bowen said that was important, because the more time they spent together the more they trusted one another and none of this happened without trust.

“It has to happen off the field to be a good combination playing on the field. I’m sure once he’s retired and got more time on his hands we’ll be catching up a fair bit,” Bowen said.

media_camera Matt Bowen is chased by Johnathan Thurston at a Cowboys training session.

“It builds a good combination when you have a good friendship with them off the field.

“What happens on the field reflects what happens off the field.

“I just remember in games, whenever Johnno sort of ran out of options he’d sort of turn and look for me.

“That trust we had with each other for all those years, if I was there then so was he. We sort of leaned on that in that way, and that’s the sort of combination we built.”

Bowen never got the opportunity Thurston did, to retire a Cowboy.

He left at the end of 2013 and had his own farewell at 1300Smiles Stadium (in the spirit of things, let’s just call it Dairy Farmers) with an adoring crowd piling in to watch their first hero score an emotional double in a 50-22 win over the Tigers.

“Just playing alongside the other 16 boys (was the best part),” he said.

“They all want that win for you, to make it special.

“To do it in front of your home crowd, with your friends and family, and your other peers that want to play and get that win for you to make it extra special.”

media_camera Johnathan Thurston and Matt Bowen enjoyed plenty of with the Cowboys.

Bowen’s Cowboys career ended the next week, in a controversial 20-18 finals loss to Cronulla which involved a try to the Sharks on the seventh tackle.

North Queensland had a chance to win it on the bell with a try to Kane Linnett. Bowen and Thurston were both involved and the last time Bowen ever touched the ball in the NRL, Thurston threw it to him.

Bowen went on to have two good years with Wigan in England and Thurston, as we all know, won two more Dally M’s and a premiership.

But neither has found the same fit since. Bowen could play anywhere for anyone, Thurston has a new favourite runner in Gavin Cooper. But it can’t be like it was.

“It was a bit hard when he wasn’t there, or trying to go to other teams and build similar combinations with players in the halves and whatnot,” Bowen said.

“But it certainly wasn’t the same.”

Now it’s Thurston’s time to say goodbye. He’s the last player from the 2005 grand final side, the last one from the first era that brought success up north. He’ll grace 1300Smiles Stadium for the last time, and Bowen will be there.

“We’ll go along to watch his last game,” he said.

“I rang him yesterday and asked him how he was doing, he said he was pretty relaxed. That’s JT.

“Once tomorrow comes and they have their team run I’m sure he’ll flick that switch and once Friday comes round he’ll be doing what he does week in week out — being competitive, chasing everything he can, tackling everything he can and no doubt the other 16 players will want to do the same for him to get that win and make it extra special.”

media_camera Johnathan Thurston surpassed Matt Bowen as the games record-holder for the Cowboys this year.

It’ll be a big weekend for Bowen regardless, cause he’s still playing himself. At 36, he came out of retirement midway through the year for Centrals in the local Townsville comp.

He seems the sort of player who could do this forever. And what are the chances that he calls his old mate up next year, just for one more run, one more time for them to run around and play footy the way nobody but them ever really could?

“It’d be good,” laughs Bowen.

“I’m trying to get Glen Hall and Ray Thompson, but getting Johnno down here next year … it’d be good.

“Hopefully one day down the track we can get to play alongside each other again, either in one of these old boys games or something fun.

“I wish him all the best, he’s had a fantastic career and I was one of the lucky ones, to build that combination with him and play alongside him for so many games.”

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Originally published as Backyard footy with JT: ‘I was one of the lucky ones’