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...
Like Cooper Cronk and Cameron Smith, he has built his game not on rare brilliance but on relentless excellenceIn rugby league, the story of great club dynasties is the story of great halves. Parramatta and Canterbury dominated the 1980s on the backs of Peter Sterling and Steve Mortimer. Canberra and Brisbane’s rise in the early 1990s came with the emergence of Ricky Stuart and Allan Langer as the two great No 7s in the game. Andrew Johns led Newcastle’s only sustained period of contention. Brad Fittler carried the Roosters to three straight grand finals in the early 2000s. Cooper Cronk kept Melbourne at the top of the premiership for more than a decade before shifting to the Sydney Roosters and...
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...
Places in the preliminary finals are at stake as the Panthers and Cowboys enjoy a week offAnd then there were six. Goodbye Sydney Roosters, see you later Melbourne Storm. Buckle up, because week two of the finals series is here. For a reason escaping just about everybody except the NRL, there are three weeks still to go but we have already reached the “semi-finals” stage. But stranger things have happened in rugby league. And more curious turns could be taken yet. Penrith and North Queensland are now sitting pretty in the preliminary finals and will watch as Parramatta, Canberra, Cronulla and South Sydney play for the privilege of facing them with a grand-final berth on the line. Continue reading...