Phil Gould labelled it a five-year plan. He was wrong on the timeline but a decade later this Panthers team is a juggernautThe golden west is now in a golden age. Penrith, just the third NRL team to win win back-to-back unified competitions in three decades, were as close to perfect as they come.Their grand final win was a demolition job, a 28-12 onslaught few teams in history could have withstood – not even the brave Parramatta. Continue reading...
One team have undergone an incredible metamorphosis while the other have simply allowed combinations to settleIn March this year, the Newcastle Knights finished their first NRLW season with a loss to the Gold Coast Titans. It was their fifth defeat of the five-game season and was far from an illustrious entry to the competition.Fast forward six months and the Knights are heading into the grand final as favourites to win their first premiership, in one of sport’s more remarkable turnarounds in form. How did such a transformation come about? For it was not simply that the change happened from one season to the next, but also that, due to the pandemic, the seasons occurred so close together – both falling...
In terms of the code’s place in Sydney’s sporting landscape, Sunday’s decider will be the most symbolic in some timeHad Peter V’landys, Andrew Abdo and the powerbrokers at NRL headquarters sat down at the start of this season and handpicked their ideal grand final fixture, it would almost certainly have comprised Penrith and Parramatta. This Sunday’s decider is a match-up made in heaven, and one which ticks every box.Under the V’landys reign, political power in the NRL has shifted away from Sydney’s east and north and settled in the west – a region now very much at the centre of the governing body’s strategy and desire. Both the Penrith Leagues Club and Parramatta Leagues Club sit inside the 12 biggest...