For a team that seems to be rewriting the record books almost every week, sometimes it can hard to tell what truly matters — as if the more that things change, the more they stay the same.
And for almost four years now, things have largely been the same at the foot of the mountains.
Once occasionally expected, wins are now the expectation.
Minuscule moments — like the on-field argument between Jarome Luai and Jaeman Salmon — are mistaken as cracks in what once was an impenetrable fortress when in reality, that fortress seems stronger than ever before.
But in the midst of Penrith’s historic run towards what could be a third-straight premiership, it is easy to forget just how close this fortress was to never being built in the first place.
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Former general manager of football Phil Gould admitted as much back in 2019. On the brink of insolvency and stuck in a rut of mediocrity, this Panthers team was the prime candidate for relocation.
“I can remember when I first went back to Panthers,” Gould said on the ‘Six Tackles with Gus’ podcast at the time.
“One of the things I said to the board at that time after we’d done a period of assessment of the program out there and where Panthers was — both financially and from a football perspective — that sometime in the next 12 to 18 months we might have a new rugby league commission.
“There might be people who come onto that board with a very pragmatic view of where the game should be going and if there is rationalisation in Sydney at any time in the future, looking at us we’d be the first to go — the way our club was at that time both financially and as a football program.
“Our whole aim has been if it ever got to a day where they were looking at some team to relocate or some team to fall by the wayside that Panthers wouldn’t be the one.
“I’ve got no doubt we’d probably have been the first cab off the rank had this decision been made eight years ago, we were in a very precarious state. Now as I look at it, we’d probably be the last to go.”
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Instead of relocating, the Panthers did some expanding of their own — hopping in a car for the first of many trips and several thousand kilometres clocked, armed with a clear vision for the club’s future.
“They [then High Performance Manager Matt Cameron and recruitment manager Jim Jones] realised while it is on our doorstep, no one really knew us,” current Panthers pathways manager Lee Hopkins told foxsports.com.au last year.
“The decision was made they were going to invest time out there. It takes time to see the riches… and now you’re starting to see the rewards of why they did that, the constant flow of players coming over the mountain.
“The amount of young country kids we have had now come into the system is remarkable.”
And there are few stories more remarkable than that of club captain Isaah Yeo.
For all the records that have been broken and premierships that have been won, there was another piece of history created in Round 5 earlier this year that didn’t generate nearly as many headlines.
In reality though, it is actually the one piece of history that speaks to just how far the Panthers have come — and just how far Cameron and Jones drove — to get to the position the club is in today.
For a team that had spent so many years searching for its identity, few would’ve expected the Panthers to find part of it almost 500 kilometres away in a small town of just under 2,000 people.
It was there that they discovered Penrith’s future club captain, who 12 years later would become just the ninth Panther — and first since Luke Lewis — to play 200 games for the club.
Now Yeo, still only 28 years old and making his 220th NRL appearance in Sunday’s grand final, looks set to become the first player in club history to reach the 300-game milestone.
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Ivan’s Penrith reflect on 2020 GF defeat | 00:41
Yeo, who was the first of what has now been many country kids to make their NRL debuts for Penrith, was first signed by Jones after a trial game in Nyngan, outback NSW.
That was back in 2011 — the same year everything was supposed to be coming together at the foot of the mountains after a standout 2010 campaign was cruelled by late-season injuries.
Instead, a year that promised so much failed to deliver much at all, opening with a 42-8 defeat to Newcastle and closing with a 32-12 loss to the Dragons — their 15th of the season.
It was also in that year though that the Panthers made a major move that set up the long-term success the club is enjoying in the present.
“That was a pretty significant move to get Gus involved,” premiership-winning Panthers captain Greg Alexander told foxsports.com.au this week.
“There was a fair bit of work to do behind the scenes and also to the roster. Bringing in Gus was a big play and it certainly paid dividends.”
That 2011 season also coincided with the departure of a few key players in the form of Petero Civoniceva, Trent Waterhouse and Frank Puletua.
The trio alone had played 413 games for the Panthers, with their exits signalling the start of a new era at the club and one that Gould would end up laying the foundations for.
Of course, to say it was Gould alone would be a disservice to the countless others working behind the scenes of Penrith’s premiership machine.
As Alexander himself said, any rebuilding project has to start with “getting the right people in the right positions”.
“One of those was Matt Cameron, who was at the Eels and took charge of our pathways programs,” added Alexander.
“Matt’s our CEO now. Matt’s done a terrific job along with the rest of the pathways team that have been there since then… Sam and Jim Jones and Ben Harden. I think things can be put in place, but the most important thing is getting the right people.”
That doesn’t just apply to the front office either. Rather, just as important in Penrith’s rebuild has been both the shrewd and tough roster calls along the way to find those right people.
A look at Penrith’s player turnover in the immediate few years after the 2011 season paints the picture of a team still in the process of figuring out what it wanted to be.
It also spoke to the emphasis on development pathways that was taking place in the background, with the Panthers cycling in a host of NRL-ready players to keep the club afloat for the time being.
Speaking of NRL-ready players, Penrith did find some success in the 2014 season with a host of unheralded heroes as the Panthers made a surprise preliminary final appearance.
The club was also starting to see its favourable results in the junior grades translate to the NRL, with Matt Moylan and Dallin Watene-Zelezniak both featuring in that team.
Injuries, however, meant Penrith was unable to build on the momentum of that 2014 campaign as the Panthers instead finished just one win ahead of the last-placed Knights in 2015.
That also ended up costing current coach Ivan Cleary his job.
PANTHERS PLAYER MOVEMENTS (MADE NRL DEBUT AT PENRITH)
2012 — Added 14 (6/14), Lost 12 (8/12)
2013 — Added 13 (2), Lost 14 (6)
2014 — Added 13 (5), Lost 7 (6)
2015 — Added 9 (7), Lost 13 (4)
2016 — Added 11 (5), Lost 13 (3)
2017 — Added 12 (7), Lost 10 (4)
2018 — Added 11 (8), Lost 9 (4)
2019 — Added 11 (7), Lost 10 (7)
2020 — Added 10 (7), Lost 13 (11)
2021 — Added 12 (5), Lost 8 (4)
2022 — Added 7 (4), Lost 7 (3)
But when it quickly became clear that Anthony Griffin was not the coach to take the Panthers to the next step, Penrith had no hesitation in bringing Cleary back.
“In the end it wasn’t really a hard decision to make,” Alexander said.
“The club just had to make sure that it was all going to happen. Just about everyone thought that Ivan was the right man to come back and continue coaching at Penrith and that’s certainly how it’s turned out.”
The Panthers also had no hesitation moving on from some of their own on the field too, parting ways with Waqa Blake, Reagan Campbell-Gillard, Corey Harawira-Naera, Watene-Zelezniak, Moylan and Bryce Cartwright among others between 2017 and 2019.
The club had already started to really see the benefits of building from within at that point, with 22 of 34 players added to its first-grade squad between the same period making their NRL debuts at Penrith.
Having qualified for the finals four times, the Panthers proved they were a team with potential.
Potential though, by definition, is about looking into the future and Penrith had already done enough of that. This team needed to start to deliver on the foundations it had built.
That also meant letting an experienced playmaker in James Maloney leave the club one year early to give an emerging Nathan Cleary the keys to lead the Panthers forward.
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Maloney had already done his job as the perfect foil for the younger Cleary, who like a sponge soaked up all the information he could get from the premiership-winning five-eighth.
But for a player as experienced and vocal as Maloney, it got to a point where it would have hampered Cleary’s development to have him playing second fiddle for another year.
What followed was a breakout season for Cleary, who finished with a career-high 24 try assists and 17 linebreak assists as the Panthers went all the way to the grand final.
Now Cleary and Luai, who developed a “sixth sense” playing together in the junior grades according to Hopkins, have won 67 of 76 NRL games together as a halves combination.
That 88 per cent win record marks as the highest for any halves combination, in the Origin era, to have started at least 14 games together according to the Fox Sports Lab.
And on Sunday the pair will become the first halves pairing to start four-straight Grand Finals together since Peter Sterling and Brett Kenny for Parramatta in 1981-84.
Thinking back to the position the club was in 2014 when he made his NRL debut to where it is now, Yeo said the likes of Luai and Cleary were behind the “real culture shift” at the club.
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“I’m thinking of the players that have sort of come through,” Yeo told foxsports.com.au.
“Obviously when I was coming into first grade, Ivan and Gus had to buy a lot of older players to try and build a bit of a culture.
“I felt there was a real shift with the next Under 20s group coming through. Whether it was Nathan, Fish, Luai, Moses, all those players coming through and I think it definitely helped that they had success coming through the grades so they understood a winning culture for their age groups. Most of all, they knew what it took to work hard.
“So I feel like that was a real culture shift there. It wasn’t all perfect, but there were all lessons along the way to get us to this point.”
It is a point echoed by Alexander, who said the kind of crunch calls Penrith made over the last decade or so were hardly a guarantee to pay off — and not all of them did.
Wayde Egan, for instance, is now providing the kind of consistent service from dummy-half Penrith needed with the exit of premiership-winning hooker Apisai Koroisau.
Although Egan, who left Penrith in 2019, would have had to wait three more years to get his shot at the starting gig. It was always unrealistic to expect him to stay that much longer.
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“That’s not how it works out all the time when you make calls,” Alexander said.
“It’s never easy for the club to be moving on players of experience and obviously quality but knowing too that their time at the club was up and probably better for them and the club to part ways.
“That period was pretty important and that was sort of the period where Nathan had made his debut.
“There were a lot of talented youngsters coming through and you tend to get it, sometimes it comes in waves, sometimes there might be one out of a junior base or an age group, you might only get one that comes through but sometimes you get a handful that come through.
“… But certainly you had that age group with Nathan and then there was a wave under Nathan and Jarome and you’ve got to keep those waves of good quality juniors continuing and that doesn’t always happen.”
For the Panthers though it has happened consistently over the last few years, with 18 players making their NRL debuts at the club in the past four seasons.
While it can be easy to point to Penrith’s geographical advantage over rival teams when talking about player development, that ignores the effort the club went to in expanding its pathways well beyond Western Sydney.
Even looking at this year’s grand final squad, Yeo (Dubbo), Liam Martin (Temora) and Dylan Edwards (Dorrigo) were all playing bush footy before being identified by Penrith.
The same goes for Jack Cole (Orange), Liam Henry (Blayney) and Tom Jenkins (Boorowa).
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One thing the Panthers also place an emphasis on with their younger players is not just debuting them when they believe they are ready to play in the NRL.
“A thing we do well here at Penrith and we have always done [it] well is we take our time with our kids,” Hopkins told foxsports.com.au last year.
“So when they are ready for the NRL they are ready to make an impact, not just come up and be in the team.”
Interchange forward Lindsay Smith is the perfect example of this. A local St Marys junior, Smith has been in Penrith’s development pathways since the age of 14 and was earmarked as a future NRL player.
He earned man-of-the-match honours for NSW in the Under-16s State of Origin game and was a part of the Australian Schoolboys squad in 2017.
Back-to-back shoulder reconstructions derailed Smith’s development in the years after though, seeing the Panthers take a cautious approach when it came to giving him any consistent time in the top grade.
“He probably needs another one or two extra off-seasons where he will build a little bit of resilience, size and muscle mass and that’s when you’ll start to the real and absolute best of Lindsay Smith,” Hopkins said last year.
Smith had played just four NRL games by that point. Now he has added another 22 to the list, averaging 85 run metres and 23 tackles as an interchange workhorse and underrated cog in Penrith’s push to yet another premiership.
“I guess with the young players, Penrith have had the luxury to be able to do that, to not have to rush players like Lindsay,” Alexander said.
“And players develop at different stages, and especially front rowers. Front rowers can take into their mid-20s and Lindsay’s had a tough run with injury too.
“He’s playing catch up but Penrith have been able to give him the time. I think everyone thought that there was a good forward in Lindsay, but some burn a bit slower than others. “Lindsay just had to make sure his body was right and the club were able to give him time to do that, to get his body up the ability to handle first grade in the middle.”
Smith is cut from a very similar cloth to the younger version of Yeo that was coming through the grades; a tough, no frills forward who competes on every play and fights for every metre.
But going back to Yeo and going back to that milestone game in Canberra earlier this season, for all the Panthers have gained over the past few years that moment was particularly important given all they had lost on the way too.
Fifteen of Penrith’s 29 players in its 2011 NRL squad had debuted with the club, averaging 101 games at the Panthers between them.
By 2013, just four remained — Tim Grant, Sam McKendry, Lachlan Coote (who played another seven games for the club) and Blake Austin (who only had one more appearance).
It underscores the void left behind by the constant chopping and changing that was a necessary evil at the time for the Panthers to take a step forward.
It took a while but now Penrith has started to fill that void with loyal servants like Yeo, whose success serves as a reminder that all those years of pain were worth it in the end.
“This one’s actually really important to our club and our history,” coach Cleary said during Yeo’s jersey presentation in Round 5.
“Yeoy becomes the eighth Panther in over 50 years to reach 200 games. The last one was Luke Lewis 11 years ago.
“It gives you an indication of how rare this achievement is.”
Rare, not only because playing 200 NRL games for any club is an incredible feat in itself, but also because sustained success is something that has been hard to come by at Penrith since its second premiership back in 2003.
Now the Panthers have two more and are gunning to become the first team since Parramatta (1981-83) to win three in a row.
For Yeo, reflecting on it all and what lessons Penrith’s rebuild can offer to other NRL teams it all comes back to where he started — as a country kid with a dream but in need of someone to carve out the path for him.
The Panthers, led by Cameron and Jones, travelled nearly 500 kilometres to give him that.
“It gets spoken about but our pathways and development are really good,” Yeo said ahead of Sunday’s grand final.
“We obviously have a big area here but then they go out to the western region of (NSW) as well so I feel like the way (the club) have been able to do that has been a big asset.
“It hasn’t been a click of the fingers; it has been a process. For every 10-15 players you might bring in you might only get one or two but I feel like they’ve been really consistent in how they’ve gone about that.
“They’ve obviously got a lot of people (in scouting) that have a lot of eyes and are always watching so I feel that definitely helps.
“Culture wise, you just want good people around the club, people that will work hard and I feel like we have that in bucket loads here.”