Register a free account today to become a member of the world's largest Rugby League discussion forum! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
We have the third best attack in the comp, so you’re wrong about that. And probably wrong about everything else too.
Agree with probably 98% of this.
In comparison, in making the Grand Final last year, we still only won 5 of the last 7 games, with a team in much better form.
The strength of the squad is the key point. Before coming back to Penrith, Cleary had been 15 years without a premiership, and had a losing record. He was so shit he had to spend time at Wests. Then Penrith’s academy started producing Origin players and suddenly Cleary can coach.
Unfortunately even at full strength we’ve often dogged it many a time , mentally we are the weakest in the comp, considering our resources, we often can’t get up, even in front of capacity home crowd, so I respectfully disagree, Panfers beat Newcastle with 6 out
The NRL changed the ruck rules to benefit smaller packs while we were stuck with Junior Paulo. And since he's part of the leadership group it's hard to move him on without diminishing team culture and cohesion.
Not cool!
No one expected Penrith to do anything after 2020. He deserves credit for bringing those players through and developing them. They weren’t established superstars when he got there.
We were good enough to make a grand final with Paulo and he was good enough to be an origin regular until game 3 this season. I think it’s too early to say whether he’s hit the wall or in a bad run of form.
We've missed the semis after our last grand final and the one before that we finished 6th and were out in week one. If you consider that a grand final represents the peak of a premiership window it makes more sense for (most) clubs to decline after a grand final appearance than to back up with another shot. There are a handful of exceptions - huge clubs that challenge for the top four every year - but we are not one of them. Don't for a second pretend that the NRL is a level playing field. Some clubs poach the best juniors from NZ, QLD and NSW country and make the finals every year, other clubs never even make the finals any more. We are in between these two extremes. Not a weak club, but certainly not one of the big money gorillas.
As has been pointed out by a few, the old "you gotta lose a GF to win a GF" mantra definitely does not apply to our mentally weak club. 2001 GF ambush followed up with making up the numbers in the finals in 2002. 2009, the following year miss the finals. 2022 GF appearance and we look like missing the following finals again...
We are underachieving with this roster though. This squad should be more than good enough to make the 8 with the current landscape of the NRL.
That's because nobody knew how good their junior 'development' (poaching) had become. But it was evident last year when they won every grade bar Harold Matts. Do you really think Ivan Cleary runs all that? It's 2023 mate. Gone are the days when head coaches like Brian Smith and Phil Gould ran football operations down to under 14s level. These days it's all about who can afford the biggest football staff.
