Referees no excuse for North Queensland Cowboys underachieving this season Neil Henry has shown restraint in describing the anguish the Cowboys are feeling North Queensland High Performance manager and Cowboys legend Paul Bowman. Picture: Scott Radford-chisholm Source: Townsville Bulletin THE Cowboys staffer who exposed Cronulla's seventh-tackle try says the controversial refereeing bungle should not mask the reality North Queensland underachieved once again. Cowboys high-performance coach Paul Bowman insists North Queensland players ultimately have themselves to blame for a below-par campaign that led to coach Neil Henry's sacking. Touted as top-four certainties in pre-season, the Cowboys languished outside the top eight for most of the year before Henry's axing sparked a six-match winning streak. Cowboys co-captain Johnathan Thurston believes the club was "robbed" for the second consecutive year, but Bowman says blaming referees is a futile exercise. The former Queensland Origin centre was a senior figure in the Cowboys' surge to their sole grand-final appearance in 2005, playing centre in their 30-18 loss to Wests Tigers. "It's disappointing an error like that cost us but the truth is we should have been better," Bowman said. We should have been more clinical. At the end of the day, whingeing and blaming the refs gives you an excuse for maybe not looking at what we could have done better in our performance and how we played. The key for everyone moving forward is not so much use this as motivation next year, but to learn from our mistakes. We don't need to be whingeing about it because everyone else is, we simply need to take the result out of the refs' hands and play better. Overall, our year was below expectations, there were missed opportunities and you never know when you will get an opportunity to win it. Bowman lamented the club's premiership drought, which now spans 19 seasons. A member of the Cowboys' foundation squad in 1995, Bowman says the departure of key quartet Henry, Matt Bowen, Ash Graham and Dallas Johnson is another body blow in the club's quest for a maiden title. "It is the end of an era in a way," Bowman said. Matty Bowen is gone, Neil Henry is gone, Dallas has finished up. Not everyone gets fairy tales to finish that's for sure, a guy like Ash Graham had to finish with an injury, those guys didn't get the send-off they deserve. I think Neil has proven, not just over the last six weeks, that we have been a consistent side over the last three years. Cowboys football manager Peter Parr said the club's late finals charge was little consolation for a year in which a grand-final appearance was a realistic target. "We believed we had a team that could have gone further," he said. Whenever your season finishes you are disappointed. We certainly felt we had the talent to be a real contender this year so to go out after the first week is disappointing.