I am going a little against the grain here.
I KNEW the Panthers were capable of this. I even think we were over a decade too late.
2003 Should have been the start of a dynasty. Unfortunately, John Lang couldn't mold that squad into a culture of excellence and humility. I think the Panthers leadership realised this in 2006 but then selected a fraud of a coach in Matty Elliot.
Still, some of John Langs recruits from his northern trip brought down some good players - Matty Bell and Michael Gordon amongst them.
Elliot had quite a lot to play with in terms of a squad and there was this batch of juniors on the horizon that came from winning junior teams.
Chief amongst them was Michael Jennings, Sam McKendry and Tim Grant. Even Jarrod Sammut. Only a few years behind was the next crop of talent Wade Graham, Lachlan Coote, Masada Iosefa (RIP), Young Waddell looked like a world beater. It seemed we had a production line of talent about to roll through the squad in waves.
Unfortunately, though the Club itself was in dire financial straits. Panthers felt like it was constantly getting rebuilt spending big $$$ and getting nothing for it. This meant that there weren't the resources to dedicate to modernise the Footy operations. Elliot proved a disastrous coach, and his love for Canberra and Newcastle plodders was unparalleled. The worst thing about Elliot though is that he poisoned the Panthers well by allowing a very loose 'player power culture'. The proof of that was that at an after-game conference - Petero pretty much encouraged members to rebel against the new leadership!
Ivan came in and had to clear a huge mess in the roster. It was painful to see us lose so many home grown sons just before and during this period. Lewis, Jennings, Pritchard, Gordon, Waterhouse. Graham and Coote and others.
I fully admit I thought he was throwing away huge chunks of a good roster and Gus was signing players who were past their best and were looking for a last pay day before retirement. Little did we know that Cleary was building a Culture on Character - not Talent first.
Then we got; 'Ivan was tired' - and he sort of was. Griffin had a squad of decent character to work with and they did reasonably well but again - he was not the right coach for us and I think he neglected culture a little.
Ivan came back in - and he 'cut the cancers right out'. It felt a little like 2011-12 again. He was getting rid of RCG; a premier rising prop - our gun outside back DWZ and a few others. Were we going to get a repeat of 2015 again?
It turns out that the cancer that he had to cut out was not nearly as bad as his 1st stint and many of the players of good character (Yeo) were there to form the nucleus of what we have today. All it would take is for a young crop of players to come in from the Pathways and culture BOTH Gus and Ivan built for us to take off.
And Here we are. We finally made it. Better late than never and I honestly wouldn't change a thing despite the pain of what felt like 15 wasted years.
