Cowboys crush Tigers

The Cowboys have cruised to a comfortable 42-14 victory over the Wests Tigers in hot and humid conditions at Dairy Farmers Stadium on Saturday night.

The Cowboys little men were dominant with Matt Bowen, Johnathan Thurston, Travis Burns, Aaron Payne and Grant Rovelli working in tandem to create plenty of opportunities for the hosts who dominated a Tigers team which made too many simple errors.

The Cowboys got off to a great start stretching the Tigers defence from the onset. Bowen was stopped centimetres short of the line after a good jinking run, but Antonio Kaufusi was too big and too strong scoring near to the posts off the next play in the third minute.

The Tigers were quick to hit back in the seventh minute when Taniela Tuiaki scored in the corner off a questionable long Benji Marshall pass from a kick deflection. Marshall's conversion deflected off the upright to leave the visitors trailing 6-4.

The Tigers made a raft of errors in their own half and Carl Webb punished them in the 17th minute when he ran a great angle close to the line to crash over. Jonathan Thurston's conversion extended the lead to 12-4.

The hosts were in again five minutes later when Bowen danced his way over after a good off-load from Luke O'Donnell and Thurston's accurate boot once again saw the lead extended (18-4).

The Tigers had a horror stretch midway through the half when they were penalised in successive sets when in possession - the first for pushing the tackler down in the play the ball followed by a surrender tackle.

The half-time deficit could have been worse only for a freakish Tigers try on the stroke of half-time to keep them in the match.

With the Cowboys on attack on the 20m line, Thurston stepped inside the first defender and spotted space but as he shaped to kick, the ball slipped out of his hands fortuitously into the arms of a charging Robbie Farah who raced 60m before producing a perfect grubber as he was tackled for John Morris to score.

Marshall's conversion was waved away to leave the Cowboys up 18-8 at the break.

Once again the Cowboys got off to a great start at the resumption with Travis Burns racing over from dummy-half against some ordinary goal line defence in the 43rd minute.

The Cowboys had it on a string with Thurston diving on a loose Tigers scrum feed to grab the tight-head turnover 10 metres from his own line and moments later three Cowboys drove Tuiaki into touch as he fielded a clearing and the home side was on the attack and looked to have all the momentum.

The Tigers didn't give in and after surviving repeat sets on their line they hit back in the 54th minute when fullback Tim Moltzen threw two dummies to run 25m to score untouched.

Marshall's conversion snuck over and the visitors trailed 24-14.

Three minutes later Farah stepped out of dummy-half and produced a tremendous 40/20. The Tigers had two sets attacking the Cowboys line but couldn't grab the reward and with that their chance at victory disappeared.

The Cowboys launched an immediate attack and Aaron Payne received a great bounce in traffic from a Burns grubber to score under the posts to extend the lead to 30-14 with 20 minutes to play.

Ty Williams added his name