It was 20 years ago this week that North Queensland needed a gift from heaven.

The Cowboys were playing in the finals for the very first time. They finished seventh, which meant a trip to Sydney to play second-placed Canterbury at Stadium Australia.

The visitors were heavy underdogs, an unfashionable side filled with competitors, rising stars and a few old hardheads. They were tough and honest and brave but they'd have to find more than that to take down a star-studded Bulldogs who were tipped to brush by them with ease.

The Cowboys had found a dream to believe in but they needed a hero to make it come true. They found it in Matt Sing.

It's hard to convey just how much of a rugby league outpost the Cowboys were before 2004.

Their debut match in 1995 was their only free-to-air game for their first nine years, a period where they collected three wooden spoons and never finished with a winning record.

They always drew crowds from their loyal fanbase despite the poor results, which is just another way of saying all they had was each other.

The club's reputation wasn't the best: for most, it was a place old players went to cash in and put the feet up while younger guys were desperate to escape.

Sing was determined not to be the former when he signed there for the 2002 season. After almost a decade in the top grade with the Panthers and Roosters, where he'd become a Queensland and Australia regular, he wasn't looking for an easy ride to the end of his career.

"There was a lot of talk about older players going to the Cowboys and struggling once they got there. I set myself a goal of not being like that, I wanted to have an impact," Sing said.

"The Roosters didn't offer me a new deal and I wanted to go back to Queensland, I never wanted to leave Queensland in the first place but North Queensland didn't have a team yet.

"I was getting towards my last few contracts and I wanted to come home."

Sing lived up to his promise. He scored 37 tries in 43 games in his first two seasons in the north as the Cowboys made gradual progress under new coach Graham Murray.

The likes of Ty Williams, Josh Hannay and Luke O'Donnell began to hit their stride, Sing gave them strike power and experience and in fullback Matt Bowen the Cowboys finally had a homegrown hero who proved you didn't have to head south to make it.

"I was lucky, they were on the improve once I did get there," Sing said.

"There were some really good players, like Paul Rauhihi, Kevin Campion and Paul Bowman, a good base of senior players."

A finals berth felt possible in 2004 but Sing suffered a broken jaw in Origin III of that year, which nearly ended his season.

"I got tackled by Freddy [Brad Fittler], who was a teammate when I was at the Roosters, his head hit me right on the jaw," said Sing.

"I knew something was wrong straight away, I'd broken it in a few places and I was worried that would be season over."

At the time, the Cowboys were trained by legendary hard man Billy Johnston.

It meant North Queensland were close to the fittest team in the competition and the former Australian middleweight boxing champion took a special interest in making sure Sing was fit for the end of the season.

"He was renowned for his discipline and he was really old-school with his training, he got me back onto the field, I couldn't have done it without him," said Sing.

"If you don't knuckle down and have a crack, he'll get you out of there straight away."

Sing made his comeback in the final round of the regular season against Cronulla but with a new twist.

In his younger days at Penrith, when they first brought him down from Winton to try and crack the big smoke, Sing had worn black, old-school leather headgear, just like his hero Steve Renouf.

It meant he got compared to Renouf from the moment he made his first-grade debut in 1993, which was fine with Sing, although he eventually left it behind.

But he brought it back, to protect his jaw — and because Renouf had done the same.

"I remember after Steve Renouf broke his jaw once he wore that same sort of headgear. I'd always admired him so much when I was growing up and at school," Sing said.

"So that was enough for me. I'll always follow Steve Renouf."

Sing went on to have the game of his life, scoring three tries in near-identical fashion as he soared high over opposite number Matt Utai.

In classic Sing fashion, he also saved three tries with key defensive plays — they say he saved as many as he scored, and given he scored 159 times through his career, that adds up to a lot.

The Cowboys raced out to a 26-6 lead before the Bulldogs pulled it back to trail by just four with a few minutes remaining.

It was Sing's third try that sealed a famous win, as he flew over Utai again to claim the ball and slam it down. Just to complete the picture, he landed right on his jaw as the Cowboys secured one of the biggest finals upsets of the NRL era.

"Matt Utai was a bit shorter — he wasn't that much shorter than me, but I could get some air.

"So the plan was for Nathan Fien to put them up and try and get over the top of him. I guess it worked alright.

"A lot of the boys hadn't played in semifinals before, just getting that first game was a great feeling for the team and the town.

"They got that buzz about it, that buzz was around the team and we just went from there."

The Cowboys had been farewelled as heroes when they left Townsville for the match but their reception on return was even greater as the north came alive for their boys, their faith finally rewarded.

"The bus ride to the airport was like a ticker-tape parade. People were on the streets, it was an amazing time," Sing said.

"It was even bigger when we came back, people pulled their cars off the road so they could cheer us."

It kicked off a semifinal run that was the making of the club as Cowboy fever swept the league. That week's episode of the Footy Show was relocated to the Townsville Entertainment Centre the following week and fans camped out overnight to get tickets.

Their semifinal against Brisbane, originally scheduled to be played in Sydney, was relocated to Townsville at the last minute and the Cowboys knocked off big brother for the very first time in a 10-0 arm wrestle that literally brought the city to a standstill — the game attracted 93 per cent of the television ratings in Townsville.

Those same fans followed them down to Sydney for the preliminary final against the Roosters. Flights were totally booked so some fans chartered a fleet of buses to make the 28-hour, 2,300km journey down south.

The Cowboys went down 16-13 in that game, beaten but still proud, and the next season Johnathan Thurston joined the club, North Queensland went all the way to the grand final and eventually, those tough early days just became a memory.

For this club, there is everything that happened before 2004 and everything that came after and that change might have never happened if Sing hadn't strapped on the headgear and flown so high.

On Saturday night, the Bulldogs and the Cowboys will again meet at Stadium Australia. The stakes aren't as high as a semifinal, but they're close — the winner will host a knockout final next week.

It's been an inconsistent year for the Cowboys but at this time of year, anything can happen — just ask Sing.

"There's a couple of games they could have won but they didn't, but they're in the semis now and anything can happen, a bit like it did for us," said Sing.