Penrith's mid-season rise destined for history books
Jasper Bruce and Scott Bailey
Mon, 28 July 2025 at 11:41 am AEST·3-min read
Penrith look destined for the history books as they sit on the cusp of the equal-greatest mid-season recovery the NRL has ever seen.
No team since 1999's Brisbane side have sat last on the ladder after 12 rounds and qualified for the finals but the fifth-placed Panthers' ongoing seven-game winning streak has them on track.
Two wins from their last six games will likely be enough to guarantee Penrith join the Broncos as one of two teams in 118 premiership seasons to play finals having been last after 12 rounds.
The Panthers could become the first team to win a finals match after sitting so low so late in a season, with the Broncos bowing out in the first week of the 1999 play-offs.
Even a top-four finish is not off the table for the four-time premiership-winning Panthers if the fourth-placed Warriors lose at least twice more this season.
The Panthers' finals hopes appeared remote when they fell to struggling Newcastle in round 12, dropping to the bottom of the ladder for the second time this season.
They have not lost since, repeatedly pointing to a lift in training standards as the reason for the turnaround.
Co-captain Isaah Yeo always felt the season was salvageable.
"You're not saying it at the time, but I still felt confident and bullish of what we could achieve,' he told AAP.
"But it's hard to do that when you're 17th. I feel like we had periods in our games that were good but we were just hurting ourselves way too much in other areas, in our defence."
On average, the Panthers' defence has leaked only 10 points a game across their seven-game winning streak.
If they'd conceded at that rate since the beginning of the season, the Panthers would comfortably have the best defensive record in the league.
Last week's 36-2 thrashing of Wests Tigers marked their fewest points conceded in a game since May 2024, with Yeo believing the Panthers have been rediscovering their brand of football.
"If you just look at this last six or seven weeks, our defence is up there with the best in the competition, statistically. That's Panthers footy," Yeo said.
"We've always prided ourselves on that. For the first half of the season, we couldn't really pride ourselves on it because we weren't holding our line well enough, we weren't resilient enough.
"At the moment, we're getting back to how we want to play, then off the back of that, you get more ball in play. We feel like that's when we're most confident, when there's fatigue in the game."
Fullback Dylan Edwards said the Panthers still had work to do before they could start dreaming of finals.
"We're definitely building," he told AAP.
"There's still a long way between now and when we're playing for keeps. We're just trying to play a style that'll hold up when we play at the back end of the year."
Penrith are tracking to become the first NRL team this century to make the finals after sitting last on the ladder through 12 rounds.
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