North Queensland 38–4 Leeds Rhinos — 2016 World Club Challenge
Headingley, Leeds · Attendance: 19,778
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
2016 World Club Challenge: North Queensland 38–4 Leeds Rhinos, at Headingley, Leeds.
World Club Series.
Sourcing caveat: No try-scoring minutes or player-of-the-match award were identified in sources found. The referee is only single-sourced.
Scorers
| North Queensland | Tries: Morgan; Linnett; Feldt; Coote; Thurston; O'Neill (2) Goals: Thurston (5 goals) |
| Leeds Rhinos | Tries: Burrow |
Teams
| North Queensland | Leeds Rhinos | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lachlan Coote | Fullback | Zak Hardaker | 1 |
| 2 | Kyle Feldt | Wing | Ash Handley | 22 |
| 3 | Justin O'Neill | Centre | Kallum Watkins | 3 |
| 4 | Kane Linnett | Centre | Joel Moon | 4 |
| 5 | Antonio Winterstein | Wing | Ryan Hall | 5 |
| 6 | Michael Morgan | Five-eighth | Liam Sutcliffe | 14 |
| 7 | Johnathan Thurston | Halfback (c) | Jordan Lilley | 25 |
| 8 | Matthew Scott | Front row (c) | Keith Galloway | 8 |
| 9 | Jake Granville | Hooker | Rob Burrow | 7 |
| 10 | James Tamou | Front row | Adam Cuthbertson | 10 |
| 11 | Gavin Cooper | Second row | Brett Delaney | 15 |
| 12 | Ethan Lowe | Second row | Brett Ferres | 26 |
| 13 | Jason Taumalolo | Lock | Brad Singleton | 16 |
| Substitutes | ||||
| 14 | Rory Kostjasyn | Anthony Mullally | 20 | |
| 15 | John Asiata | Mitch Garbutt | 17 | |
| 16 | Scott Bolton | Jimmy Keinhorst | 18 | |
| 17 | Ben Hannant | Josh Walters | 21 | |
| Paul Green | Coach | Brian McDermott | ||
Match officials
| Referee | Richard Silverwood (single-sourced — not independently cross-confirmed) |
Match report
North Queensland's inaugural World Club Challenge appearance came as reigning NRL premiers on the back of their maiden 2015 title. A tight 4-4 scoreline at half-time, Leeds' Rob Burrow try their only points, gave way to a dominant Cowboys second half driven by captain Johnathan Thurston's kicking and playmaking. The match turned ugly late on when Leeds forward Mitch Garbutt was sent off for striking James Tamou, reportedly only the second dismissal in World Club Challenge history (after 1987), and a brawl briefly erupted. The win, completing an Australian 3-0 sweep over Super League clubs that year, gave the Cowboys their first world title in the same season they won their maiden Australian premiership, a landmark moment for the Townsville-based club.This fixture was the headline match of that year's expanded World Club Series, in which several other NRL and Super League clubs also played one-off cross-hemisphere fixtures the same week, though only this particular match determined the World Club Challenge title itself. The fixture as a whole began as a single unofficial match in 1976 and was repeated only sporadically through the 1980s and early 1990s: it wasn't played at all in 1988, 1990, 1993, or 1995-96, the last of those gaps caused by the Super League War splitting Australian rugby league into two rival competitions. The 1997 attempt to relaunch it as a 22-club, two-conference "World Club Championship" — five Australasian clubs touring Europe and five European clubs touring Australasia simultaneously — reportedly lost more than $5 million and was shelved for three years. It returned in 2000 as the simple one-off match still used today, missing only during the brief 2015-2017 multi-match "World Club Series" expansion (when the marquee fixture still determined the World Club Challenge title, alongside several other NRL-Super League pairings played the same week) and the 2021-2022 Covid-19 cancellations and the 2025 withdrawal by Penrith Panthers. The result here was North Queensland's 1st World Club Challenge title and the 24th staging of the fixture since its unofficial 1976 debut.