‘It was time to make a change’: Luke Garner 80 minutes away from joining exclusive NRL group
Panthers players have grown used to winning comps, but grand final week is completely new to Luke Garner who was stuck with the wooden spoon just 12 months ago.
Luke Garner will join an exclusive club with a win on Sunday as he looks to go from a wooden spoon to a premiership ring in the space of 12 whirlwind months.
Only Brenko Lee in 2020 and Harvey Howard 20 years earlier have gone from the bottom-placed team to the premiers the following season, with Garner 80 minutes away from becoming the third player in the NRL era to achieve the feat.
Seeing an army of journalists at the Panthers Academy on Tuesday hit home just how far Garner has come from the guy whose team conceded 128 points in his final two games with the Wests Tigers.
It’s a very different build-up this time around, with Garner preparing to come off the bench for Sunday’s grand final 12 months after he got back from a trip to the Northern Territory with his partner.
“I was actually back from my holiday so that shows (how far I’ve come) because we didn’t make the finals and it had already been four weeks since we’d finished our season,” he said.
Winning has become the norm out west but it’s foreign territory for Garner, who hadn’t played a finals game in the NRL until three weeks ago when he was picked at centre for the game against the Warriors.
It’s been eight years since he last played a grand final when he was part of a Manly team featuring Dally M winners Tom Trbojevic and Nicho Hynes that lost to Penrith in the 2015 under-20s decider.
Garner scored a try that day against a team featuring the likes of Jarome Luai, Dylan Edwards and James Fisher-Harris, and now he gets to call them teammates after he decided to leave the Tigers following five lean seasons.
“There wasn’t really a pitch from Ivan,” Garner explained, with plenty of external noise that he was brought in to replace Viliame Kikau on the left edge.
“I think Ivan and the club sort of speak for themselves. They’ve had so much success and you only have to look at their resume which made it so tempting to come across.
“This is nothing against the Tigers, but I’m a person who likes to get out of my comfort zone and challenge myself in different areas.
“I was at the Tigers for five or six years and I felt it was time to make a change.”
There were big raps when he arrived and Garner was rewarded with a starting spot for the World Club Challenge, but things didn’t gel on the left edge and he was swiftly dropped to reserve grade after just three NRL games with his new club.
Garner had to wait three months for a recall and was still playing NSW Cup in mid-August, but he has won back his spot and will come on as the bench utility against Brisbane.
“I never questioned if it was the right call,” he said after falling out of favour.
“When I wasn’t in the NRL team, I had to keep training hard and back myself to get back in the team. It’s come at a good time to slot back in.
“Ivan told me I had to work on a few areas because there’s a certain way we play our footy and I wasn’t playing like that at the start of the year.
“I went back to reserve grade and worked hard to become what a Penrith player is supposed to look like. And now I’m back.”
Garner is likely to come on for Scott Sorensen on the left edge at some point on Sunday night and partner Liam Martin in the back row.
The Blues star is one of the favourites for the Clive Churchill Medal and will go up against Kurt Capewell who played in two grand finals for the Panthers before he moved to Brisbane last year.
“He was incredible for me,” Martin said.
“He came here and played that mentor role for me because I was still pretty young. He taught me so much.
“I know they say that Adam Reynolds is a big part of the success and culture up there, but I think he (Capewell) certainly would have played a part in it with how hard he works.
“He doesn’t stop for the whole 80 minutes so I love ‘Capey’ and look forward to matching up with him.”