Albert Einstein once said – "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales".

If ever there was a fairytale that could deliver a message to our children about tenacity, sacrifice, and the fact that success smiles on effort, then Johnathan Thurston's golden point moment in Sunday's  grand final is that fairytale.

I don't want to talk about the football or the strategy that took place on Sunday night. I want to talk more about what it taught us. You could sit kids down in front of a replay of that game and teach them lesson after lesson about sport and about life.  Words cannot do justice to what we witnessed. It had everything.

Rugby league is a team game and it's the spirit of the team that makes the individual. People perform at their best when they are part of a team; when they feel committed to each other and a common cause. But every now and then, there comes a player who makes a team.  Thurston is such a player.

His perseverance on Sunday  under intense pressure was extraordinary. Even when time was running out and it would've been easy to start thinking the football gods were against him, Thurston and his teammates found a way to keep going.

In the end, Thurston and his team of Cowboy mates found a way to impart their desire and their will on the final result. It was a brilliant game of rugby league football. The 2015 NRL Grand Final was a tremendous exhibition of all that is good about our game.  To be honest in saying that I don't like a lot of the football we've seen this season. I don't agree with the way a number of teams in the NRL go about their work. It's all too structured, awfully repetitive and completely lacking in creativity. There – I said it.

Brisbane and North Queensland have produced two tremendous finals games in the last month which have really restored my faith in our code. These matches have been played with great intensity, skill and spirit. The quality of football players has been a credit to both clubs and both coaches.

There were no losers in this match.  No one failed. No one let themselves or their teammates down. The fans of both clubs can be proud of the efforts of their respective teams.  We could continue playing this game for another three days and I don't think we would find one side gaining ascendancy over the other. Neither side would ever give in. The moment one team got to the front, the other would come roaring back.

However, the rules say we have to give the trophy to the team in front on the scoreboard after 80 minutes of play. In this instance, it took 82 minutes of play.   Courtesy of a Thurston field goal in golden point extra time, this year it was the Cowboys.

To the victor go the spoils. The feelings of elation and achievement. The rewards for months and sometimes years of effort to get to this pinnacle of performance.  The sheer joy of success, unbridled excitement and celebration belongs to the Cowboys.

By comparison, the agony of defeat is debilitating. Your legs give way as you slump to the ground. Your emotions spill over into tears of pain. You didn't try any less than your opponent. Like them you gave as much as you had to give. There wasn't a whole lot of difference on the scoreboard. But the way you feel in defeat, compared to the celebrations going on around you, are really galaxies apart.

Players are often lost for words to explain what winning a grand final means to them. There are no words to explain what it feels like to lose one. But that's football.

To back up my thoughts about the quality of the contest and the special place this game will have in our rich history, consider the fact that not one spectator left the ground at full-time. Normally fans make their way to the exits to get a head start on the traffic. Losing fans need to get away from the scene.

Not so on Sunday. Everyone stayed around until the presentation was complete. They all wanted to pay their respects to the teams. Something makes me think that everyone, including Bronco fans, wanted to be there when Johnathan Thurston lifted that premiership trophy.

I'm glad I was there to see it.

Well done JT. Well done North Queensland. Well done rugby league.