- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
From Jamisontown to St Marys and everywhere in between, delusions were soaring for a top-four finish for the mighty Panthers coming in to 2014.
Even despite yearly anti-climaxes and wrenched-guts since 2003 due to poor performances and the closure of Wonderland, every single person inside this approximately 13-kilometre area still harboured deluxe toey tingles for what lay ahead.
As for everybody outside this region, excluding wherever Gus lives, well, the survey says they were not so randy. Ice-cold post-argument with the wife randy, to be exact.
After maxing out the credit card on stock over the last few seasons, Ivan Cleary was finally getting to the latter stages of construction on a Toyota Camry roster- solid but unspectacular, top of the column in the classifieds but nowhere near a Street Machine feature. It excited the true believers, but stunk of ‘top nine’ to the outsiders.
However, us doubting tommies were forced to eat dust as Cleary’s mounties hovered in the top bracket for the first half of the season. Sheesh, even at one stage they were sitting in first position, forcing us to temporarily prise open our discerning lips to give reluctant praise… for the easy draw they had been gifted.
This contrived respect was short lived though, as an injury crisis at the club became so bad it was humorous. When this was seasoned with a couple of losses, including one to the lowly Sharks, us doubters were seemingly right again, and it felt so good.
As we predicted, Penrith, for all of their unthreatening gallantry and wholeheartedness, were about to find their rightful place outside of the top eight and at the worst time of the year- when flight prices to Bali started trending upwards due to the imminent seasonal onset of flocking footballers and bogans.
Amazingly, they rose from these setbacks like a good soufflé and then served it up to us with a side of Clive Palmer-sized humble pie. That crafty Cleary chap rebooted his skeleton playing stocks with a switched-up offence and a barricade system that could scramble like a Russian radar jammer.
After losing marshals like Isaac John, Peter Wallace and Tyrone Peachey, he’s patch-worked the rifle duties beautifully with Jamie Soward and the untried Will Smith (insert movie pun here), while relying on whippets like Matt Moylan and James Segeyaro to chime in as further scoreboard filler.
Cleary has also had it no easier up front with guys like Elijah Taylor, Brent Kite and Bryce Cartwright out for the long term, but somehow he’s kept it all together there too. It’s real blood from stone stuff.
So even despite the rough injury trot, the workman-standard depth and the minimal belief outside of the 13-kilometre jurisdiction, his Penny Panthers have padlocked a position for September. Hell, there’s even a chance they may secure a rare double-bite of that famous cherry, and it would be fully deserved should they defy the world and do so.
Put simply, after what they’ve achieved in 2014 so far, Ivan Cleary and his cohorts are already a pack of chocolate soldiering geniuses. I dips me lid to y’all and then crack myself with a painful crow peck to the brain case for not paying more respect earlier on.
So now for the obvious question: can the plucky Panthers go all the way and win the premiership?
Woah woah woah, now please- put it back in your pants! You’ve gotta draw the dreaming line somewhere. Of course they won’t win the title. We all know that.
In saying this, the Panthers can’t let this good year of hard yakka slip. What they must do is set their sights slightly downward with a reasonable and realistic expectation- something a little lower than the title and a little higher than landing the link jackpot at the World of Entertainment.
What they must do to cement their season of wonderful overachievement is to just win a final. Any final will do, just win one and get the punters really excited.
Now this goal will sound silly in the ‘premiership or bust’ mentality of league followers, but put simply, the Panthers are wounded by injuries and don’t possess the artillery to go with the big nags. So why not just make September more about being a funky adventure and less about unattainable targets?
It will be an excellent result considering what they’ve endured and it will give them a fantastic springboard in to 2015, when hopefully they’ll get all of their goods back from the Nepean Hospital.
So Roarers, what does Penrith have to do to crack a rare grin from Cleary? Is 2014 already considered a success, or do they need to wade deep in to September to make it all worthwhile?