Injured captain Johnathan Thurston addressed his fallen Cowboys teammates in a huddle moments after Sunday's grand final loss to Melbourne to deliver a blunt message: Remember this feeling. Embrace the pain, bottle it up, and use it to as a launching pad to bring the NRL premiership back to North Queensland next year.
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Prior to Sunday's 34-6 thumping by the Storm, only three Cowboys had played in a losing grand final - Thurston, Ben Hampton and Kane Linnett.
Hampton played in last year's decider for the Storm, who fell to Cronulla, while Linnett was part of the defeated Sydney Roosters in 2010.
Thurston fell one short of the premiership way back in 2005 when the Cowboys lost their maiden grand final to the Wests Tigers, and the star playmaker had to wait a decade until he could right the wrong by kicking the winning golden-point field goal against Brisbane in 2015 to deliver North Queensland a first title.
Thurston will return to an already formidable-looking line up next year, alongside co-captain Matt Scott and Jordan McLean, who joins from the Storm.
He'll also reunite with Michael Morgan, who had a breakout season in Thurston's absence, steering the Cowboys into the grand final from eighth spot.
"People can pat us on the back and say we were courageous this year and did well to get where we got but the ultimate goal is to win a comp and we didn't do that," Morgan said.
"To get here and play the way we did tonight, that's what's disappointing.
"No one else gave us a chance so we said during the week we were up there on our own and believing what we were doing."
Morgan will soon turn his attention to the rugby league World Cup, with the Cowboys star expected to be named in Mal Meninga's squad on Tuesday.
His influence was curtailed by a clinical Melbourne team on Sunday, although he did manage to lay on his side's only try with a clever pass to Te Maire Martin.
That was early in the second half, but the Storm scored 14 minutes later through Dale Finucane to kill off the contest.
"It's not a good feeling," Cowboys hooker Jake Granville said.
"It lights a bit of a fire in your belly for next year. You can take both feelings, you can be proud of what we achieved but also to get there and not really perform as well as we thought we could.
"We definitely thought we deserved to be there, we didn't think we over-achieved. We knew we were playing our best footy in patches but we weren't stringing it together with a whole performance.
"You can say from the outside looking in that we're lucky to be there, making the numbers, but we believed we deserved to be there and we believed in ourselves tonight that we could win but that wasn't to be."
