For Panthers fans this season 2015 will be remembered as ‘Injurypocalypse 2015’. The team suffered setback after setback on the way to a lost season.
While the Knights and Titans have both actually used more players than the Panthers 29 this season, it is hard to deny the profound impact the Panthers injuries have had on their season given the quality of players missing significant time.
None of the Panthers first choice spine of James Segeyaro, Peter Wallace, Jamie Soward and Matt Moylan have played more than 13 games and other first choice players like Josh Mansour and Dean Whare have also missed significant time.
With so many injuries the club was never really able to get going, with their attack in particular suffering from the absence of those critical playmakers.
Twenty three rounds into the season and the club is dead last in points scored and even that doesn’t really convey how dire their attack was at times.
Season highlight
Its seems a long way to go back but two rounds into the season the Panthers were sitting on the top of the table after crushing the Titans 40-0.
After a surprising run to the preliminary final in 2014 the first two games of the season seemed to confirm that 2014 was no fluke and that the Panthers would once again be a strong contender. Sadly the wheels rapidly fell off as the injuries and poor form for key players began to pile up.
Season lowlight
With their finals hopes evaporating quickly the Panthers visited Melbourne on the Friday night of Round 19. Despite entering the game with a reasonably healthy line-up for once, the Panthers conceded a soft try to Cooper Cronk inside five minutes and things didn’t improve from there.
As if copping a 52-10 hiding wasn’t enough, the misery was compounded by the fact that this match was the delayed telecast into Sydney with Channel Nine preferring to air the Bulldogs versus Eels game instead. It’s hard to know which is worse, following along live online as the Storm piled on try after try or avoiding the score only to watch the flogging on delay with a million rubbish commercials.
Best player – Reagan Campbell-Gillard
Its not often that a player can be named a team’s best in his rookie season but it is even rarer for that player to be a hard-working prop who the broader rugby league public probably couldn’t pick out of a line-up. Heck I’m not sure I could pick him out of a line-up.
But Campbell-Gillard is absolutely a worthy nomination as player of the year for the Panthers. Not only was he the Panthers’ leading metre-maker in the forwards with 106m per game while also averaging 22 tackles per game from a respectable 39 minutes, he did so with remarkable consistency for a young player in a position that traditionally favours older men. He even scored the Panthers first front row try over the weekend.
Moreover in a team beset on all sides by injuries Campbell-Gillard was one of only three players to play all 20 games so far this season Campbell-Gillard. The other two? His fellow props Sam McKendry and Jeremy Latimore.
Even with Brent Kite and hard man Nigel Plum (its compulsory to use the phrase hard man whenever referring to Nigel Plum) retiring the Panthers remain remarkably well-stocked in the front row. Now if only they could get that sort of endurance from every other position on the roster.
Roster management
Despite being several seasons into the Phil Gould-Ivan Clearly era, the Panthers are far from a settled squad. They have four first grade players leaving at the end of this season – including two retirees Nigel Plum and Brent Kite, along with Lewis Brown and Apisai Koroisau who will both join the Sea Eagles.
Coming the other way is a coterie of young talent including highly rated halves Te Maire Martin and Zach Dockar-Clay – along with one of the best acquisitions by any club in Trent Merrin. At 103kgs and 181cm or thereabouts and with tremendous skill at that size plus a virtually unlimited motor, Merrin is a top-shelf, custom-made middle unit player for the new eight interchange era and will help to plug the gap left by the departures of Plum and Kite.
Prognosis
While the slump from preliminary finalists to eliminated with four rounds remaining is understandable in the context of the awful injury toll the club has suffered, the risk is that the club doesn’t bounce back in 2016.
Simply getting all the troops back on deck doesn’t guarantee a return to the success of 2014. In a perverse way the opportunities provided to young players this season may actually make it harder to settle on a top 17 next year as more and more vie for a position.
There is an old saying in the NFL that if you have two good quarterbacks you actually have none, and that burden of riches may become a challenge for coach Ivan Clearly in 2016.
That being said, the talent on the roster at the Panthers is truly remarkable with the club fielding a NSW Cup side littered with legitimate first grade talent and a NYC team that has scored boatloads of points. Moreover in Clearly the team has one of the most astute coaches in the game.
As such it is hard to imagine that the Panthers don’t bounce back in 2016.
Predicted finish: bottom half of the eight
Niall
Guest
Albo, I'm of the belief that there is plenty of these generals around but the coaches we have in our game strangle the life out of them. Penrith fans are lucky to have Soward, SGID would not have won that premiership in 2010 with any other player in the comp in that role. 100% agree on Trent Merrin, I think people get caught up in statistics and Super Coach points.
The Barry
Roar Guru
Cheers. If a positive can be found out of the injuries then it's accelerated RCG's development.
lmm040183
Guest
Leilani Latu has been hugely impressive since his debut. A front row rotation of Merrin, Mckendry, Latimore, Latu, RCG and Kikau is more than enough to start the year. Merrin will command huge minutes and won't be playing at lock as Taylor is an 80 minute lock and is ineffective out wide. With Merrin playing 60+ minutes every week the forward rotation will be fine.
Rory O'Sullivan
Roar Pro
No doubting that the Panthers have had a horrid run of injuries yet I think that there are more causational factors at play here. Young players have failed to perform on the big stage and with Soward and Wallace ageing I think this is a serious concern for the club. 2016 will be no easier, with Sika Manu, Nigel Plum and Lewis Brown departing the club with the only big signing the temperamental Trent Merrin. Uncertain times still to come for the men at the foot of the mounts.
Parrafan
Guest
So much said of Panthers injury toll, but the Eels have had just as bad if not worse. At one point our three hookers were injured De Gois, Peats and Kaysa PRitchard and we were using Cody Nelson, our Wenty Lock at hooker. We are now up to 11 season ending injuries, but not one word of an injury crisis at Parramatta. Maybe we need father Gould directing the heat elsewhere in the media.
Albo
Guest
Lachlan I have followed the Panthers since they came into the competition in 1967. In all that time they have always had a competitive team , usually a willing pack of hard working forwards and the occasional handy backline player. Plenty of local young talent to develop in first grade standard. And some good buys over the years like Stephenson & Ashurst in the 70's , Chris Mortimer & Peter Kelly in the late 80's made big improvements to young squads at the times. But throughout their history they have only ever had one on-field general smart enough to consistently lead the team around the park and to make them a serious premiership contender ..... Greg Alexander in the late 80's early 90's . ( I still don't know how they won in 2003 with Gower ? I can only put it down to it being a poor year? ). And like most of the NRL teams today , this is the rare "on field general" commodity that they are all searching for ( and to pay $1m + for) to turn a squad of good competitive players into a serious contender to win a premiership. The Bronco's & the Storm have dominated the premierships in recent decades because they have always managed to find a good general to lead teams of handy players around the park ( Wally, Alfie, & Lockyar, and Cam Smith & Cooper Cronk) . I have long been amazed why the Panthers with their huge junior league, has never developed any juniors to carry on the general's role from the Alexander era. Nor have they managed to import anyone near to that calibre. ( Freddy was a potential successor ( though never as smart as Brandy in reading the game) , but was whisked soon away by Gus to the Roosters during the Super League wars). I realise the good ones are very rare and if your club had missed out on Thurston & DCE (& perhaps Foran) in recent years, your team is down with the rest of the leaderless NRL packs just hoping to get on a roll at the back end of the season and have a clear run from injuries to eek out a tough victory on GF day. But where are the new young generals . ? They haven't been coming through the Panthers lower grades since Alexander starred as a schoolboy at St Pats and where the next year he went straight into reserve grade for just three games , before they had to promote him to a long career in first grade in 1984, and thereby letting Des Hasler go to Manly. Matt Moylan has the smarts to be the new general, but I don't think he could stand up to the role physically in the halves the way the game is played today. He is better off at fullback with regular incursions into the backline play in attack. So I am not as excited as you yet about the new buys " Te Maire Martin and Zach Dockar-Clay " . I have seen them a little in the lower grades, and they do show some ability, but they often come with big wraps and disappear just as quickly. But I hope you are right that these two can develop into something special going forward. I can't share your enthusiasm for spending a good chunk of your salary cap on the likes of Trent Merrin. I can't see any value there . What does he offer for $700k per year that another 20 forwards can't give you for half that price. They don't need any forwards anyway. They have a club full of good forwards throughout their three grades. and many with better contributions than Merrin has shown in recent years. Why would you let Lewis Brown & Koroisau go to Manly to pay for Merrin ? No ! They need halves and a couple of centres, and pretty urgently ! Or they will end up frustrating some of their smarter players like Cartwright & Moylan whose games may suffer from the loads thrown onto them , or even worse, have them move on to play with a smarter team !
Lachlan Bickley
Roar Guru
Well they're bringing in the Cowboys under 20s prop Viliama Kikau who is an absolute beast of a lad so that will help. Aside from that i'm not sure who their best front row prospects are. Agree completely on Moylan, its one thing to chime in from fullback and look like a playmaker, its another altogether to have that responsibility (and defensive work load) full time
The Barry
Roar Guru
Moylan's transition will be an interesting challenge for Cleary. Do you phase him in gradually - filling in when Soward or Wallace are injured (which they regularly are) or wait until one of those two retire and give him the jersey full-time? He seems to play naturally as a 6 but when you have the 1 on your back you don't have the responsibility of game management and can fade in and out as required. Harder to do that as a 6. With Manu leaving, they are even more in need of a big man. While RCG, McKendry and Latimore may not have been injured this year - you can't get through a season with three props. Who are the next tier that they have?
Lachlan Bickley
Roar Guru
Completely agree on injuries, everyone gets them but every so often a team has an unusually bad run of luck and the Panthers qualify for that this year. Will be interesting to see how they use Merrin. Ideally I think you want him playing 65 minutes per game and as you say shredding the middle after others have done the grunt work to get you out of your own 30 or 40. Sika Manu is leaving I believe and I've never been a Docker fan even when he was inexplicably picked ahead of Shaun Fensom for Country last year. So much depth in the outside backs as you point out. Hard not to imagine that Moylan transitions to six at some point and DWZ sticks at FB
The Barry
Roar Guru
I usually roll my eyes when people say things like a teams season derailed by injuries. Everyone gets them. But this really has been something else for the Panters this year. Plenty of backrow depth with Cartwright and Peachey emerging but could be light on in the middle third with Kite and Plum leaving. To be honest I thought Kite had already retired I've seen him so little this year. Merrin's coming in but you don't want him using up petrol taking those tough second and third tackle hit-ups. They should bounce back in 16. With Moylan, Wallance, Soward and Seggy they have a top spine. Whare, Mansour, DWZ, Idris, Blake, Yeo, Jennings and Jennings in the 3/4's. Merrin, Cartwright, Manu, McKendry, RCG, Latimore, Peachey, Taylor, Docker is a pretty good and versatile pack - maybe lacking a big man or two.