In 1996 the North Queensland Cowboys under Coach Graham Lowe won 6 games with one of their best against the Newcastle Knights at home. The following week they went on to defeat the Cronulla Sharks.

The Round 11 defeat of the Knights was one to remember from the dazzling runs of crowd favourite Reggie Cressbrook to the halves combination of brothers Ian and Andrew Dunemann. Andrew had only recently made his Cowboys debut in Round 7.

Four years earlier I first met Ian and Andrew as a first year reporter in Toowoomba where I covered their Harristown High School team's march towards the Commonwealth Bank Cup Final. During that time I had a chat with Ian saying how good would it be if he was playing for an NRL team I was reporting on. And here we were! This Harristown team which included Steve Price narrowly lost the final to Patrician Brothers Fairfield 17-16. One of Harristown's toughest game that year was against my old school St Mary's Toowoomba.