Success breeds success. I never said the Storm aren’t well run. They’re very well run. I just said it’s easier when things fall in your lap. Brisbane having a monopoly over the best juniors nursery in the country + being the biggest franchise in Australian sport + always polling in first in “which club would you like to play for if not the club you’re already at” surveys is a bigger competitive advantage than any other club has had, so that shows you how poorly that club is run. It’s weird that the Roosters have been more successful than them & are the ones who always get the big free agents and that’s only happened because the Broncos have fumbled the bag somewhat.
Penrith are very different. They were mired in mediocrity and actually did implement a long term plan and stuck with it. They combed through a shitload of teenagers to find kids like Cleary and Luai - Cleary being the son of a former great player is a happy coincidence, nothing was handed to him - and moulded them into the players they want. They had a philosophy about how the game should be played and how halves should be developed - watch Isaiya Katoa play and it’s uncanny how similar his kicking technique etc is to Cleary’s - and they stuck by it. They convinced Jarome Luai to wait his turn while Cleary learned his trade with a more experienced halves partner in James Maloney, all the while results were mediocre and the pressure to find a quick fix was massive.
They accomplished all this while being one of the least appealing clubs to free agents and no one thinking of them as a “big club” - even still, to this day, you had Spencer Leniu describing the Roosters as “the pinnacle of the NRL” after he just played for a three time defending premier the Roosters haven’t beaten in 5 years. It’s remarkable.
Penrith have inarguably put themselves on a level above everyone else. Would have thought accomplishing feats Melbourne hasn’t sniffed without cheating the salary cap would make this hard to argue with but I suppose not. I admire Penrith because they are what the Knights should aspire to be if we invest in the things we do have going for us. The path Melbourne and the Roosters have taken is not one which is available to us.
If you want to know what the Storm would look like in the NRL era without a fair amount of serendipity, look at the Sharks. Very comparably well-run clubs, very similar operations in a lot of ways.
How are the Storm like the Sharks? They've had several coaches in the last 15 years that aren't in the same postcode as Bellamy, they don't make plodders look a million bucks, I wouldn't say they have anything resembling a long term culture of success by any metric.
Your argument seems to be if other teams had been "lucky" enough to have found Smith, Slater, Cronk, Munster, Paps etc then they'd be successful too. Well, yeah. But the argument doesn't extend to Cleary, Luai, Yeo for some reason. It's not like Storm sniped their blokes from other teams in their mid 20s.
Storm have been the benchmark of success due to their "systems" for almost 15 years now. No doubt Panthers currently are the most successful club but imo we don't know yet if this will result in long-term, consistent success beyond some generational players. You talk of the Storm all-time greats yet despite their losses, the Panthers have managed to keep a core of Cleary, Yeo, Edwards, To'o, Leota and until this year JFH & Luai. The first two in particular will go down as some of the best players ever to play the sport in their position.
Here's some "luck" - since 2020 Panthers have had the following players missing games from their 5 finals runs (none of them GFs) while their opposition has often been missing at least 1 star (Storm 21 Prelim lost 2 props in the first half, Latrell 21 GF, Nelson 2024 GF):
Leota - 2
Cleary, Luai (+ 23 GF injury) Edwards, JFH, Taylan May - 1
No team gets anywhere without a certain element of luck. Hell, the Panthers had the biggest rule change in the last 20 years come in in 2020 that completely changed the way the game was played, after failing to make the 8 in 2019 which just happens to coincide with the start of their run.
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