Team officials are not aware of any permanent damage to the 25-year-old, but were worried enough to send Tamou to Westmead Hospital midway through the game for a thorough check-up.

Tamou was hurt in the first half when he attempted a wayward forearm on Bulldogs prop James Graham before making contact with teammate Ashton Sims in the same tackle.

Tamou left the field unassisted, but stayed down for at least three minutes in discomfort.

‘‘James Tamou has some pins and needles affecting one arm and is awaiting scans #rideemcowboys,’’ said the Cowboys’ Twitter page reported.Johnathan Thurston, who orchestrated one of his side’s best wins of the year, conceded he was worried when he saw his teammate hit the ground after getting himself into an awkward position.

‘‘It doesn’t matter who the player is, when you see the replay and they’ve copped a knock to the head and that neck area, you care and you feel for them, so I was a little bit worried,’’ Thurston said. ‘‘We’ll see how he pulls up in the next couple of days.’’

Cowboys coach Paul Green said Thurston had put in an excellent defensive effort and would be a chief morale-booster for the rest of his teammates in the weeks leading up to the finals.‘‘I thought his tackling was good and think it gives our big guys a bit of extra motivation when they see our little guys making good tackles,’’ Green said. ‘‘We’ve played better for 80 minutes at different games, but it was a really tough win. We showed a lot of steel defensively.

‘‘It was a bit ugly at times, but we showed a bit of resolve, we wanted to get back to how we were defending earlier in the year and I thought we did that tonight.’’

Sitting in seventh place on the ladder before Sunday’s matches, Thurston said his team understood how important the Bulldogs game would be in building belief for a side who have struggled to score points away from home.

‘‘It is the monkey off our back, but the challenge for us now is to back that up and I think we’ve snuck into the eight now so we need to stay there,’’ Thurston said. ‘‘It’s the big challenge for us the next five or six weeks. We’ve got to back it up,  otherwise it can all come unstuck.

‘‘It was a good win last week against Cronulla, but all that hard work could have come unstuck if we didn’t get the two points tonight. We haven’t won here in eight years, so it’s pretty pleasing.’’

The Cowboys are hopeful Matt Scott and Gavin Cooper will return for their clash against Gold Coast next week after lengthy stints on the sidelines.