NQ Mens 20's Break the 'NQ NTL Drought' at NTL 2010

2009's third placed side, the North Queensland Tropical Cyclones, have been crowned the 2010 National Champions defeating the Hunter Western Hornets in the Men's 20's division.

The game started out at a frantic pace with end to end action. Hornets had touchdown opportunities in their first two sets of six touches, but could not convert. On the Cyclones first real attacking set, they converted. The Hornets hit straight back with a well worked touchdown catching the Cyclones middle offside.

Cyclones then scored the next three touchdowns with some fancy play to take the score to 4-1 mid way through the first half. Luke Goninan scored on the wing after getting away from his defender, sheer brilliance by Hayden Boyce put Cyclones two touchdowns clear, which was then followed by one of the most impressive touchdowns of the competition when Tom Searle and Lawrence Oberleuter combined to give Searle the fourth touchdown for Cyclones.

Hornets struck back quickly through a long ball back infield to Brad Campbell whose sheer speed beat his defender and closed the gap back to two touchdowns.

Cyclones then put on two quick touchdowns to take a commanding 6-2 lead heading late into the first half. Lachlan Conlon scored Cyclones fifth with an impressive hole run, leaving the Hornets players swiping at thin air, and Tom Searle finished off the Cyclones scoring for the first half with an almost identical touchdown to the previous hitting a hole outside the link.

Hornets were not done though, putting on two touchdowns before the half time siren through Tate Shaw who dotted the ball down on the wing after Cyclones tried to shutdown on the half, and Ben Glachan dived over on the stroke of half time after her received the play on call due to a Cyclones defender being offside.

In the second half, Cyclones were the first to score through Brayden Lazarus extending their lead to three touchdowns, but Hornets were keen to stay in the match by putting on the next two touchdowns through Michael Duff who found a hole after a Hornets half runner crossed the line and Tom Dafter received a play through call to dive over and score at the feet of a Cyclones defender.

Cyclones scored again to take the score to 8-6 when Kristian Congoo crossed on the wing.

With ten minutes left on the clock, the game slowed down as fatigue started to set in. Hornets gave it everything with a break down the sideline, only to be run down 10 metres out from the score line, but were able to close the gap back to one touchdown when Ben Glachan scored in the link after a diving flick pass from Jake Fitzpatrick.

Cyclones finished the game with a touchdown to Luke Goninan who caught a long ball on the wing, slipped over but managed to crawl his way over before the defenders could get to him.

Congratulations to North Queensland Tropical Cyclones who defeated the Hunter Western Hornets 9-7 in a thrilling match.