It was 2014. The Penrith Panthers had just been knocked out in the NRL preliminary finals after finishing the competition third, and already people were looking forward to what this team could achieve in 2015.
Finals were a certainty, the grand final a possibility.
Some experts even thought – and no, I’m not trying to rub their nose in it – that the Mountain Men would top the ladder.
They were seen as a team building to a sustained, strong future, under the plan set out by general manager Phil Gould.
Their team had played some great football in the opening weeks of the 2014 finals series, but had been knocked out by a budding Bulldogs outfit, who would go on to be belted in the grand final by the rampant Bunnies.
Things were positive, the Roosters’ time was over and someone had to replace them. For many, that team was the Panthers.
But 2015 proved to be the opposite of a dominant season for the Panthers, missing the finals after a horror run of injuries.
Hardman Nigel Plum retired during the season due to ongoing health concerns, while first-choice halves Jamie Soward and Peter Wallace barely played a game together due to crippling injuries.
2015’s breakout player, Matt Moylan, was ruled out early in the season due to a troublesome ankle, and big centre Jamal Idris was wiped out with an ACL problem. Josh Mansour, James Segeyaro and Dallin Watene-Zelezniak also spent long periods on the sideline.
Like that, the Panthers lost the vast majority of their backline’s strike power.
To top it off, they got rid of coach Ivan Cleary, who looked “tired”, and brought in Anthony Griffin.
So where do we see the Panthers in 2016? Is it back to the pointy end of the ladder? Or lurking down the bottom of the table? The answer lies in three elements.
First is the fact that they won the Under-20s NRL club competition this year.
Second is the mentality the club has adopted since former NSW coach and rugby league guru Gould took over in 2011.
The third is that the Brisbane Broncos, Griffin’s former team, have just graduated from also-rans to grand finalists, and look set to compete in the next five years.
They want to be a football club that not only buys and sells footballers, but one that produces them.
Moylan is the perfect example of a player who Gould wants to produce.
He played in Penrith’s Under-20 team from 2009 to 2011, went and plied his trade at the Windsor Wolves, then broke into first grade in 2013. In 2014 he was a star. In 2015 he was injured.
But he won’t always be injured. Neither will Wallace, or Soward.
And with their Under-20s side taking out the premiership, the promise of more players following in Moylan’s footsteps (so long as Penrith can retain them) means the Panthers have set themselves up nicely for the next decade.
Gould’s strategy is about investment in players, in the club, and in the structure to gain long-term success. It’s well known that he surrounds himself with good people – you don’t achieve success playing a lone hand, and you don’t succeed by accident. Gould knows this.
An Under-20s premiership is a piece of a puzzle that will come together over a long period of time. But there’s no doubt that some of those players who were successful this year will come into first grade to replace Plum, David Simmons and Brent Kite.
That’s why the general manager at the Panthers wasn’t interested in winning every week when he first joined the club. A couple of lean years were no big problem in the context of what’s to come.
He’s playing the long game, and he was prepared to cop some criticism for it.
A change of coach won’t change the fact that this crop of players is primed to be successful; if anything, what we’ve learned about Griffin is that he buys into similar ideas of player development and retention.
In an interview with Fairfax – another of his employers – earlier this year, Gould hinted to as much after he committed to Penrith until the end of the 2017 season.
“They’ve all shown great confidence in what we were doing and they joined in good faith, so I can’t really walk away from them until we’ve spent a fair bit of time together,” Gould said.
“They approached me about staying around until the end of 2017. We shall continue to develop everything we’ve put in place over the last couple of years.”
And that’s what it’s about. Create the environment, get the players and staff – good players and staff – to believe, and you can create success.
2015 was a blip. I believe the Panthers will rise again in 2016.
Gould has invested too much in the club’s long-term structure – hiring people behind the scenes who won’t soon leave, and installing a coach with a mandate – for the work not to pay off.
2016 marks the end of the five-year period he was given to ‘turn the club around’. With 2014 well behind him now, it’s a crucial marker in his tenure as an administrator – a role previously unfamiliar to him.
The Penrith Panthers invested in a five-year plan. 2016 will determine just how much Gould’s work has paid off, and whether it will continue to do so for the next decade.
Top up. Take off
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