Feldt targets Bowen record and 200-club after inking new deal

Cowboys winger Kyle Feldt has his sights on Matt Bowen’s all-time try-scoring record and becoming a 200-game player for the club after inking a four-year contract extension.

Feldt’s new deal will take him through until the end of the 2024 season and all but ensure the Townville-born flyer finishes his career as a one-club man in the city where he played his junior football.

The 2015 premiership winner has scored 75 tries - including 55 in the past four seasons - in 117 games. If he continues that strike rate Bowen’s club record of 130 tries is well within his grasp.

"Fifty tries, that’s a lot," Feldt said when asked about the record.

"It is something that I want to work towards, and not only scoring tries but being on the paddock every week."

Feldt, who will play in Saturday night’s home clash with Cronulla, said as youngster it was "always a possibility" he would play in the NRL for his home city. Looking back, he’s just glad he did.

"To be able to do it at this club and in my home town has been a lot easier, just not having to move away from family and having such good backing here as well," he said.

"The next four years I want to really push towards that 200-game mark and be someone like a Morgo [Michael Morgan] or Scott Bolton, who are local boys who have come through the ranks.

"Hopefully [the contract] will take me to the end of my career. It has come at a good time, coming out of this isolation period that we’ve had.

"It was weighing on me in the break, knowing that the NRL had put a hold on contracts. Having it locked away is good timing."

Feldt is a cult figure in North Queensland for his try in the 80th minute of the 2015 grand final which took the decider into extra time and made the club’s inaugural premiership possible. He said being a local household name was a special feeling

"I think that try helped a fair bit," he said.

"It is something for little kids to look up to who are Townsville born and bred and really pursue their NRL dreams."

Nobody in the NRL will forget the 2020 season in a hurry. For Feldt there have been several highlights on and off the field and he is hoping to cap it off with a second title for the Cowboys.

"I was talking to Dad the other night about all the stuff that has gone on. He just said that as people get older they have got to grow up and this year I have grown up," he said.

"I’ve got engaged and signed a new deal and now I want to focus on the club for four years and hopefully bring another premiership back here."

Meanwhile, Feldt said he was confident the circumstances surrounding Cowboys fullback Valentine Holmes’s exit from Cronulla in 2018, which Cronulla skipper Wade Graham criticised this week, would not be an issue for the star recruit against his old club.

"It is totally up to them what they say … but I know Val has moved on from everything and is just really focusing on the Cowboys and helping us out," he said.

"Everyone that comes up against their old club wants to put their best foot forward and Val is professional and come Saturday night he is going to be ready to go."