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It’s just over two months until the Grand Final, but we might be able to call it now: if anyone stops Penrith making it three in a row, it will be a miracle.
This was their sixth win in succession and their tenth in eleven. At no point in their dynasty have the Panthers looked so dominant.
Melbourne, currently in fourth and one of the most respected teams in the competition, were absolutely crushed, 26-6, without Penrith really ever getting into top gear.
Nathan Cleary and Jarome Luai ran the show, Stephen Crichton offered additional spark and Brian To’o scored two trademark tries the corner.
But beyond the highlights, it was pure domination. The first half was played entirely in the Storm end, suffocating Melbourne and fatiguing them such that they eventually relented.
In the second, the Panthers seemed to treat the game as an opposed defensive session, batting away attacks on their goalline in a manner that made light of the talent available to the Storm. They were simply too good.
The only black mark might be over Luai, who was put on report for a shoulder charge with Nelson Asofa-Solomona. Ivan Cleary laughed it off, but the five eighth appeared to catch the Storm forward in the face and was off his feet when he made the contact.
“Very happy tonight,” said the coach.
“We started a little scratchy, but the back end of the first half was strong.
“Second half was a little different where they had field position but our defence in our end was possibly as good as we’ve done all year. That’s going to keep us in good stead.
“The last couple of games we’ve had a fair bit of possession, so you can control the game, but in the second half we didn’t. It’s really good that, against a quality team who were throwing plenty at us, the boys kept finding a way and turning up.”
Melbourne are now in a fight for the top four, with Canberra able to draw level with them on Sunday before the pair clash at AAMI Park next weekend. Souths and Cronulla, in hot pursuit, face off tomorrow night.
“The Panthers are really good at playing the possession and field position game,” said Craig Bellamy.
“They did a great job in the first half. We helped them. We didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot, we blew our feet off with errors.
“It looked like we were looking for short cuts. That doesn’t work against a top team like that. You need to be squeaky clean to go with them. We did dumb things.”
The Storm will do it without George Jennings, too, who was taken off early with a medial ligament injury. Jahrome Hughes, too, missed with an ankle injury ahead of kick off, while Xavier Coates is out with a hip problem.
The Panthers have no such worries. The minor premiership will surely be theirs, and it would be a very brave punter who bet against them making it a threepeat at the start of October.
The Panthers stumbled for about 0.4 seconds early in the year and everyone wrote them off. It all looks a bit silly now.
Naturally, losing a few close ones – even the aberration to the Tigers in Bathurst – didn’t make them a bad side, or really, any worse than they have been at any point in the six again era, and if anything, seems to have inspired the Panthers to be even better.
They know better than anyone that you don’t win anything at this time of year, but it’s hard to watch this side at the moment and then imagine anyone beating them at all. They’re that far ahead.
There’s an argument that Brisbane can challenge, but they’re probably a year off. Souths have defeated them at near-enough full strength – the only side to properly challenge the style that Penrith have near perfected – but they’ve not hit close to those heights in months.
On this evidence, the Storm aren’t a chance. They were great for 20 minutes in Melbourne a few weeks ago, but a Cleary-less Panthers reeled them in and won in the end.
This time, it lasted about the same. Those Melbourne took the lead, they were never in control and couldn’t cope with the pressure, the possession and the patience of the Panthers.
Tonight, it was their ability to spread wide in good ball that unpicked the lock, but next week, it’ll be something else.
In truth, while the attack changes, it’s always the defence that wins it. Melbourne got one through a clever early switch, but beyond that passage of play, the Storm accumulated nothing.
They visited the Panthers end for one measly tackle – the one from which Young Tonumaipea scored – and that was it for the first half.
The Storm aren’t used to being humbled in this manner. They’re in the business of learning from their defeats, too, and largely come back stronger.
That’s the reputation built over decades of work under Bellamy, but the 2023 edition has shown more cracks than most.
They looked bereft at times tonight. While that was in the face of outstanding Penrith defence – and supreme control early on – it was still notable that Melbourne didn’t offer, really, anything of note with the ball.
Cameron Munster, not for the first time this year in big games, was anonymous. It’s hard to put a finger on why the Queensland superstar has been so quiet, especially given how good he was at points in Origin.
In his younger days, he might have done something off-the-wall, maybe even wild, to inject himself in. Jarome Luai, constantly on the wind up, or Cody Walker, never far from a scrap, would likely have done something like that were they in Munster’s position today.
Instead, he was the worst thing of all for a superstar half. He was passive. Harry Grant, too, was subdued and Nick Meaney did little.
It’s clear that this is not the match of other Storm teams in terms of talent. Justin Olam is well off his best and is languishing in reserve grade, along with the injuries to Coates, Hughes and Reimis Smith.
But even so, it can only be seen as a demonstration of the levels that are on offer in the NRL at the moment, and how far Melbourne are from them.