As has been in the case so far in 2016, the 71st minute ticked over and a Panthers game was in the balance, this time on a blustery Saturday evening at a packed AMI Stadium.
But for once Panthers fans were able to put away their defibrillators with time to spare as two tries in the closing minutes saw Penrith run out 30-18 winners and climb to seventh on the NRL ladder.
Apart from the 4.7 Magnitude earthquake that shook up the Panthers earlier in the week, much of the pre-game hype focused on whether Bryce Cartwright, playing against the only team he has yet to face in his tender 39 NRL game career, would re-produced the form displayed last Sunday in Tamworth, that has NSW fans tongues wagging and league experts pondering.
Instead, perhaps appropriate given it is Indigenous Round, it was another Panther Tyrone Peachey whose road to redemption is fast becoming a path to prosperity with a three-try performance playing on Penrith’s left edge that has now has put the nephew of David Peachey firmly in the mix for an utility spot on the NSW Origin bench.
Go back four rounds to Round 6 and Peachey was playing at Hunter Stadium for Penrith’s Intrust Super Premiership.
But since his return to the NRL a week later, Peachey’s form has improved rapidly and despite failing to settle on the one position, his versatility in being able to play on both sides of the field either as a back, edge-forward or even in the middle as a hooker or five-eighth, makes the City Origin representative an ideal bench utility for NSW Origin coach, Laurie Daley.
To cap matters, Peachey like his famous uncle scored his first hat-trick in his 52nd NRL appearance.
Not to be undone, Matt Moylan continued his push for State of Origin selection with another classy performance, laying on two tries and having a hand in another, while Cartwright overcome a sluggish start defensively to continue with his claims for a Blues jersey as did Josh Mansour and Trent Merrin.
For the Warriors, it proved to be yet another enigmatic performance for their chief playmaker, Shaun Johnson, who along with Tuimoala Lolohea and Solomone Kata, was the Warriors’ most potent attacking player, but cruelled his side’s chances with both a fumbling and kicking error in the opening half that enabled Penrith to overcome a sluggish start in defence to score 14 unanswered points during the first half.
That slow start in defence was confirmed after just six minutes when some slick hands including a tip on from Johnson, enabled Kata to exploit some Panthers right edge defence, brushing off Junior Kiwi, James Fisher-Harris and bamboozling Cartwright with some slick footwork to score a converted try.
But those two blunders from Johnson soon allowed the Panthers to deprive the Warriors of any possession for the next ten minutes and score 14 unanswered points in the process.
Jamie Soward’s low kick drilled deep into Warriors territory enabled he and Isaah Yeo to get the jump on Johnson at dummy half, forcing the five-eighth back into his own in-goal, before his attempted off-load ended up loose on the ground, allowing the playmaker to gleefully pounce on the ball to score his first try since Round 25, 2014.
Consecutive penalties allowed Soward to kick the Panthers ahead 8-6 before Johnson’s restart sailed over the dead-ball line on the full.
The ensuing penalty allowed Penrith to extend their lead after Moylan went to the line and held up a late offload for Peachey, running an excellent reverse-angled line to score unopposed.
But the Warriors, with the howling wind behind their backs in the first half, coupled with a lucky six-again call, stormed their way back into the match through tries to Jonathan Wright and Blake Ayshford.
Wright’s try came after he bumped off Kiwi Test winger Dallin Watene-Zelezniak to score in the corner before minutes later the Warriors took back the lead when Johnson decided to run it on the last and made a mess of the Penrith defensive line before finding Bodene Thompson who hurled the final pass for Blake Ayshford to crash over in the right corner.
That 18-14 lead held after Panthers prop Suaia Matagi, running off a deft Leilani Latu pass was caught short of the tryline but could not resist the second effort to score and was duly penalised for a double movement, much to the majority of the ‘home’ crowd’s relief.
But the four-point lead was never going to be enough with that wind at Penrith’s backs in the second half.
The Warriors might have put behind them the scandal which saw six players dropped for mixing prescription medicine and energy drinks on a late night out, but errors and ill-discipline haunted them in the second half, despite holding out the Panthers for the first 20 minutes in the second spell.
Conversely the Panthers, had missed 15 tackles in the opening half, muscled up defensively in the second, holding the Warriors to nil before running in three late tries for a deserved win.
Penrith, after a scrappy opening twenty minutes when in possession, finally regained their composure and the lead in the 62nd minute when Moylan again with the late short pass combined with Peachey to run the reverse angle.
Penrith’s second half defensive efforts were typified two minutes later when Yeo pulled off a crunching one-on-one try saver on Lolohea, who for all money looked certain to score.
While yet another Panthers game was heading into familiar territory in the final ten minutes, the Panthers looked the more likely to score next.
And they did so in spectacular fashion when Moylan kept play alive on the last, passing onto Fisher-Harris, whose brilliant back-hand flick offload (one of 19 on the night for the Panthers) enabled Watene-Zelezniak to produce a stunning athletic dive to score in the right corner.
The Warriors, now trailing by six, chanced their arm having regained possession from the short kick-off but Kata’s ambitious offload was plucked by Watene-Zelezniak who scooted 60 metres downfield.
The Panthers were clinical in sealing their first double-digit win for 2016 on the next play, shifting the ball from one side of the field to the other, before Isaah Yeo and Josh Mansour combined to send Peachey over in the left corner and Penrith were finally breathing a little easier for the first time in 2016, with minutes to spare.
For Peachey, the sense of occasion in scoring his first NRL hat-trick on the Indigenous Round was not lost on him, before adding that it was important the Panthers improved in both attack and defence in that second half to secure their fifth win of the season.
“(The round) means a lot to me, all my family and that have been watching back at home, so it was good that we got the win,” Peachey said.
“We just had to defend better and execute our attack.
“I think we did that in the second half and luckily we came away with the win.”
The winning margin is a new experience for Penrith in 2016, with all nine previous games decided by eight points or less and improves their win-loss record to 5-5, cementing their place in the top eight.
And they finally return ‘home’ next Sunday where they will be looking to make it three wins in a row going into the bye, when they take on the Gold Coast Titans.
Conversely the Warriors drop to 4-6, continuing an alternate win-loss record over the past six rounds as they struggle to break into the top half of the table and will be desperate to bounce back next Saturday night when they host Canberra Raiders.
Penrith Panthers 30 (T Peachey 3 J Soward D Watene-Zelezniak tries; J Soward 5 goals) beat New Zealand Warriors 18 (B Ayshford S Kata J Wright tries; S Johnson 3 goals) at AMI Stadium.
Referees: Matt Cecchin, David Munro.
Half-Time: Warriors 18-14.
Crowd: 17,669.
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