The Panthership: Penrith have four in a row, but don’t dare think it was easy

Four in a row! From a distance, the Panthership will look inevitable. Think of St George’s eleven straight titles, and it seems a wonder that anyone tried to beat them.

But this is never how it is at the time, and in 2024 least of all. When could you begin to split Penrith from Melbourne, who beat them twice in the regular season?

You couldn’t split them in the final series, which was a month-long collision course between the champs and the undisputed minor premiers. The whole season had been a competition within a competition, a separate shadow league. Penrith or Melbourne? Storm or Panthers? In March, while the NRL horsed about in Las Vegas, Penrith and Melbourne were doing the real stuff, bludgeoning each other in Sydney. So it started, so it would finish.

By sunset on Sunday, there was still no way of splitting them. The tipsters couldn’t, nor the odds-makers and a tossed coin would have landed on its rim and stayed there.

If a difference was emerging in the first half, it lay beneath the surface and seemed to be opening Penrith’s way. For two highly programmed teams, much of this grand final was ad-lib and last-ditch. You could catalogue the whole game by the desperate try-saving defensive plays and ankle taps out of nowhere. But Melbourne seemed to be doing too much tackling to survive.

Nathan Cleary was able to underplay his hand and his wounded shoulder, while Jarome Luai schemed and sparkled. But Harry Grant ran between Liam Martin and James Fisher-Harris (has anyone done that, ever?) to score the first try and put Melbourne ahead. The minor premiers have been the most consistent team of the year. Penrith, of course, replied within moments.

Harry Grant scored the first try of the grand final.Credit: Getty Images

Could Coachcam provide any answers? No, but it did provide contrast.

Ivan Cleary, in athletic wear, trim enough to run onto the field, looked like he was vaguing off in front of the Weather Channel.

Craig Bellamy, aiming at becoming the Inspector Clouseau who could solve this Pink Panther mystery, spent a lot of the game chewing half of his mouth. Then he started on the other half. He tried to get the cap off his water bottle but failed – palms too sweaty.

His comments were X-rated. The only times he really calmed down, and this is telling, were when Penrith scored. When Sunia Turuva and then Liam Martin went over in the second quarter of the match, Bellamy was perfectly still. He looked like Ivan.

This became impossible to watch: Bellamy too stressful, Cleary too Zen.

Just when Melbourne looked gassed, they revived. Only a Penrith pile-under stopped Jack Howarth from levelling the scores, according to the bunker anyway. It wouldn’t be the NRL without a divisive video call.

Deep into the second half, it was Melbourne galloping through a tired Penrith middle, and Brian To’o was off with a bung knee. Wingers have become indispensable, and To’o is the best. Penrith had to reorganise.

But Nathan Cleary broke the line and put up a kick. A bomb, as Inspector Clouseau once said, can be identified as the exploding kind. The match had been unusual for the approach, adopted by both sides, of the defenders to yield high kicks to the attackers.

The Penrith defence swarms on Jack Howarth.Credit: Nine

This time, Liam Martin was allowed to catch Cleary’s bomb. Martin seemed to pass the wrong way, to the wrong man, but Moses Leota, a prop forward who embodies Penrith’s total football in his barrel of a form, popped the ball to Paul Alamoti, who planted the ball within a surgeon’s stitch of the in-goal sideline. For the first time, the teams were separated by more than a single score.

The Melbourne Storm dead? On came Lazarus (Vaalepu). A zombie onslaught from Melbourne, five straight sets in possession, was impaled by another thrust of pink self-defence. Howarth was thrown over the sideline. Bellamy this time became the exploding type of bomb, while Ivan the Unflappable checked the weather.

In the final minutes, Nathan’s shoulder subluxed again, but his team was now in deluxe mode. Alamoti put his arm in Munster’s mouth, and Cameron became Herman. It had been a strip of dental floss between these two teams all along. That was probably the moment: Penrith got the penalty and weren’t going to lose.

That said, even in the last minute it was only a spectacular Alamoti leap that stopped the Storm from doing what they always do, which is score the last try and keep the thing alive. Now, definitely, you could separate them, after seven months, two Melbourne wins over Penrith, and 80 minutes. It’s quite likely that if Penrith and Melbourne played each other a hypothetical 10 times, they would win five each. Penrith just won the one that happened in real life.

Four in a row. It speaks for itself. Just don’t let anyone tell you it was a sure thing.