Has there been any team’s form over the last couple of months more impressive than that over the Penrith Panthers?
Over the course of 2016, the Mountain Men have seen their fair share of disappointments.
At the same time, they’ve shed two of their most iconic players in Jamie Soward and James Segeyaro.
Despite all that, however, they’ve managed to consolidate in an incredible way in the buildup to finals football.
All of a sudden, this feels like a team that deserves to be ranked among the very best in the game – or at least that will deserve to be ranked among the very best over the next couple of years.
In their very different ways, their thrashing of the Tigers in Round 24 and their field goal victory over the Titans in Round 25 were statements of purpose and conviction.
Yet last night’s game against the Sea Eagles took their form to a whole other level.
Only conceding six points across the entire eighty minutes, the Panthers notched up a thirty-point lead and almost made it half as much again with several near-misses and dashes that didn’t quite make the line.
Nevertheless, the entire game was defined by their speed, agility and momentum, both in attack and defence.
Sure, Manly aren’t the hardest team to beat at this point in the competition.
But the Panthers didn’t just beat the Sea Eagles – they leapfrogged them into what often felt like the first game of finals football.
Often, when one team is so dominant, the game gets a little stale. I was at Leichhardt earlier in the day, and as a devoted Tigers supporter, it quickly reached a point where it was as tedious as it was troubling to see the team so thoroughly decimated by the Raiders.
Yet the more dominant the Panthers were, and the less chance Manly had of winning, the more exciting last night’s match at Pepper Stadium became.
Perhaps that excitement comes down to the sheer intensity the Panthers brought to their match – as the last game of the regular NRL season it was our gateway into finals footy, and Penrith sure were determined to prove it.
Perhaps it also comes down to the thrill of seeing the Riff playing like a finals team. Even as a Tigers fan, I’d have to concede that we haven’t been playing consistently like a finals team over the last couple of weeks.
Sure, our win over North Queensland was staggering and our victory at Mt Smart was unexpected, but a finals team – a team that really deserves to play finals footy – manages to capitalise and consolidate more consistently in these last crucial weeks.
And that’s what Penrith have done. With each game, they have cemented their finals ambition, to the point where it seemed almost inevitable, at key moments last night, that they would make it all the way to the final showdown.
Perhaps, then, the excitement came from seeing a team accelerate and intensify so consistently. With such a long season and so much player movement, the NRL is full of false starts, but for once Penrith seem to be the real deal.
While the Raiders may have put in an utterly dominant display over the Tigers, Penrith have been unmatched in this round for sheer blistering momentum.
From the moment they were let out of the cat cage it was clear they were determined to make a meal of Manly.
One of the Fox commentators observed that Waqa Blake is even more damaging in attack than defence, and the continual reformation and cascading acceleration of the Panthers certainly seemed to dissolve attack and defence into a single escalating momentum.
Nowhere was that clearer than in the footwork of Blake and Dallin Watene-Zelezniak, who together brought home a third of the Panthers’ six tries.
Josh Mansour was responsible for another third, scoring his first four-pointer less than five minutes into the game and bringing down his second right on the full-time siren. If you were looking for definitive proof that Mansour has hit the big time in 2016, this was it.
In their own way, Bryce Cartwright and Peter Wallace were just as impressive at the 21st and 27th minute respectively, managing to seek out the chinks in the Sea Eagles defence and bring the Steeden to ground.
Let’s not forget Nathan Cleary either, who managed to convert an astonishing six from six tries, three of them from the sideline. Already, this kid is one of the most reliable and visionary kickers in the competition, and the crowd went nuts every time his boot hit the ball.
Behind it all, however, was Matty Moylan, who played a role in nearly every try and – for almost the first time this year – really fulfilled the promise and potential that he has always radiated as fullback.
While he’s had spectacular moments and great games before, last night was the first time he really felt like the custodian of the team, going so far as to argue with the ref about a penalty, as if taking of advantage of the greater latitude for dialogue that appears to have been opened up with the introduction of the captain’s challenge.
While the ref promptly ignored him – the commentators joked that they wouldn’t want him for a defence lawyer – the fact he questioned the decision at all was a good indication that he’s starting to settle into the assertiveness and attitude required of a No.1, without losing his trademark modesty and politeness in the process.
Over the course of the second half, the Panthers were much quieter, only scoring a solitary try five minutes in and conceding the only Sea Eagles four-pointer of the match to Jake Trbojevic at the 60-first minute.
Yet even this turned the second stanza into a pummelling lesson in defence tactics, as the Panthers repelled virtually everything that Manly threw at them.
Throughout the year, Anthony Griffin has noted the difficulty, for Penrith, of maintaining their momentum in the final quarter – especially defensively – and it’s been these last twenty minutes of the game that the Riff have really managed to refine and consolidate over the last few weeks.
Watching them, I realised that there’s nothing more satisfying in rugby league than seeing a struggling team come good.
In this week’s Big League, there was a fascinating article about Newcastle that got me wondering whether the Knights may be one of the best coached teams in the business.
Sure, they’ve only won a single game this year, but sometimes vision depends upon building long-term plans and being prepared to experiment in the short-term.
In many ways, that has been both Gus Gould and Anthony Griffin’s strategies, and the fact that it is now starting to really reap dividends on the eve of the finals is breathtakingly exciting.
With the Tigers now out, my hopes are with the Panthers, the other great Western Sydney cats.
While nobody from outside the top four teams has won the grand final in over two decades, Penrith suddenly seemed as if they might break that mould last night at Pepper.
With momentum now their biggest asset – both as a mindset and on the field – it’s going to be so exciting to see how they cope against the Bulldogs at Allianz on Sunday. Bring it on!
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