Last year the Penrith Panthers couldn’t win beautifully. Now they’re winning ugly. I know which one I’d rather as a long-suffering Panther’s fan.
The Panthers have had two home games to open the season, and in both they dug a hole from which there was no way they could have found a way out of last year.
In retropspect the way the Panthers of 2017 dealt with falling behind was to play some outlandish freestyle form of touch football, with Matt Moylan running from one side of the field to the other and no-one really knowing where he was heading.
Tyrone Peachey would take up the baton and run everywhere, even backwards, and at full-time the deficit would be roughly exactly what it had been when panic had set in and the team lost all of its patterns searching for quick points.
Jump forward a year and both games to open this season could have been exactly the same, especially last night’s match.
The Souths leading 14-zip at the break would have meant a second half of flick passes and crazy offloads aimed at no-one, and the errors and the penalties would have made for a mad disjointed half heading nowhere.
(Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
Penrith still have heaps to work on. They dropped ball and pushed passes and gave away penalties on tackle four and five. Some of that must have been down to the crazy heat at the foot of the mountains, especially in the first half.
But somehow this year it doesn’t matter. James Maloney just gets them back on track, even if it is ugly and slow and a case of two steps forward and one back.
And at full-time it turns out that they have done enough. Irony rules sport.
If there was one player who started to buy into the fruitless freestyle of last year’s reaction to falling behind it was Tyrone Peachey. He wouldn’t have been out of place in the Fijian rugby sevens. Last night he put the icing on the boring cake that dragged the muddling Panthers back from the abyss of a big deficit in the stinking heat.
James Maloney is worth his weight in gold. I lost count of the number of times the coverage of last year’s the opening round against the Eels showed him laying down the law to his hardworking forwards, outlining the next step back towards parity.
Sell the house and put it on the Panthers to make the eight if not the four. With Maloney there that actually is gambling responsibly.
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