I picked the Knights pretty confidently to finish the decade on a high with a finals appearance but despite their star signings, the culture still needs changing.
Frustrating for Penrith as well. Gould helped to turn the club around when things looked pretty dismal across the grades. We won plenty of lower grade comps and made the NRL finals 5 years out of 10 (the best decade in terms of making First Grade finals for the club) with plenty of strong talent coming through..but didn't have a much of real worth to show for it. Only 1 prelim final appearance and 4 semi final apps, which isn't that bad but the expectation was the Panthers were building to be a premiership contender and that didn't happen, as a highly disappointing 2019 shows. Many talented players left he club and went on to bigger and better things at other clubs, i.e. Michael Jennings and Luke Lewis won comps at other clubs. There were also controversial sackings of coaches that made us scratch our heads and bemusing coaching appointments... The 2010's was a decade of promise and potential which Penrith couldn't quite fulfil.
I actually see quite a few similarities between Penrith and Newcastle at the moment. They're both solid Rugby League areas with the biggest junior talent pools in the game. In that regard they are the polar opposite to Melbourne and Easts. Yet they're also the polar opposites to those clubs in terms of how they're run and their consistency- they can play great footy one week or string a bunch of wins together that has you thinking they've found the missing link and will mount a solid finals charge, but then play stupid and diabolical footy in equal amounts. For all the potential of those squads and the areas they have a presence in, they continue to underwhelm which is a real shame because if they became consistently successful it'd be a massive boost to the game and much more popular than seeing the Roosters and Storm featuring in Grand Finals every other year.
Mind you, if we want to talk about truly underachieving, there's a club up north that are the richest team in the league and have half a state to draw from, yet (barring a miracle) will have just a single Grand Final appearance to their name and no Premierships in 15 seasons at the conclusion of 2019...
*Edit* Yes, you can sign me up for their anti-members pack too. I'll take the platinum version, please. Complete with tepid 6 pack of that mid-strength they drink and empty plastic bottle for when I can't get out of the stadium quick enough...
